Drifting from strong English women to the strong women of the American civil war we meet Barbara Fritchie, a strong woman who tried to fight off a Confederate general. She became famous in an 1863 poem. She was an elderly woman, around 90 when the incident happened, who waved a union flag from her attic as General Stonewall Jackson marched his Confederate troops through town. Jackson ordered his men to fire at the defiant woman. She shouted at a confederate general "Shoot if you must this old grey head, but spare your country's flag." In the end she had a poem written about her and a quilt block named after her, not bad going really!
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