
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 19, 1993                   TAG: 9307200577
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

LEE COULD TURN THE GIRLS' HEADS

ON JULY 4, a very patriotic article appeared in the Horizon section of the Roanoke Times & World-News ("Patriot inspired poem, museum in Frederick"). It was about the poem John Greenleaf Whittier wrote in which he spoke of 95-year-old Barbara Fritchie leaning out her second-story bedroom window and fluttering a Union flag at Stonewall Jackson's Confederate troops as they marched by her home. She shouted, "Shoot if you must, this old gray head, but spare your country's flag . . . They did. They spared her too. So impressed were the troops with her spirit, that they touched not a hair on her noble head."

This is understandable, for Jackson's troops did not even pass her house. Their route was several blocks away. And according to her daughter, who was nursing her, the old lady had been bedridden for months.

Another myth of Northern history. But another flag-waving did occur in 1863 when Lee and his troops were in Pennsylvania marching to the battle of Gettysburg.

A few young ladies were standing beside the road waving small Union flags, trying to taunt the Confederate troops as they marched by. As Gen. Lee - said to be very handsome, dignified and the very essence of a soldier - rode by, the girls lowered their flags and looked in wonder at this son of Mars. One was heard to exclaim, "Oh, how I wish he was ours."

SUSAN RICE\ ROANOKE

by CNB