Colonial Campaigns Club (CCC)

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">November 11, 2005
Stripes, Stars and Dollar Signs
By GLENN COLLINS
New York Times

The war veterans who once revered them and followed them - and then lost them - are all long gone. But now, their battle standards, taken by the enemy, have at last returned to American soil after two and a quarter centuries.

The flags are believed to date from the Revolutionary War and to have been seized by a notorious British cavalry officer, Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton.

On Oct. 28, the four flags arrived in New York from the south of England, where they had been privately hung as wall trophies by Tarleton's descendants.

Their sudden re-emergence, like the awakening of a martial Rip Van Winkle, has caused a stir in military and historical circles, to the intense satisfaction of Sotheby's, the auction house. It hopes to sell the flags next year for a total of $4 million to $10 million.

Such an improbably grand price for four faded pieces of fragile, hand-stitched and hand-painted silk derives from their origin as "sacred and vivid relics of the birth our nation," said David N. Redden, a vice chairman of Sotheby's in Manhattan.

"Flags of such rarity and history have never come up for sale," said Mr. Redden, who has an auction tentatively scheduled for next June 14 - Flag Day.

The flags arrived from the Hampshire home of Capt. Christopher Tarleton Fagan, 70, who said his great-great-great-great-uncle was Banastre Tarleton (the first name is pronounced Ben-AS-ter).

"There is no question that they are authentic," the captain said from home in a telephone interview, explaining that the flags have adorned the walls of Tarleton descendants for at least a century. He provided a photograph from the early 1900's showing the flags - flanking a stirring portrait of Colonel Tarleton by Sir Joshua Reynolds - in the smoking room of Breakspears, the family home. Captain Tarleton Fagan's grandmother, who died in 1952, bequeathed the Reynolds painting to the National Gallery in London.

One of the four flags is believed to be from a Connecticut cavalry regiment, which lost a standard to Tarleton's troops in Westchester County in New York on July 2, 1779. The other three flags, from a Virginia regiment, are thought to have been captured near the border between North and South Carolina on May 29, 1780.

Unlike most surviving flags from the era, two of the standards have vibrant colors. Two measure about a yard square; the others are close to four feet square.

"It's the first I've heard of it," said Susan P. Schoelwer, chief curator at the Connecticut Historical Society Museum in Hartford, referring to the Connecticut standard. The historical society has another rare flag from the same unit, the Second Regiment of the Continental Light Dragoons.

"To have a flag come on the market, with a history like this, is pretty remarkable," Dr. Schoelwer said.

The Smithsonian Institution currently has on view another battle flag from the same Connecticut regiment and possesses two other Revolutionary flags and the fragment of another.

"This is an incredible find," said Walter H. Bradford, acting chief of collections at the United States Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C., which under federal law maintains the Army's flag collection. "They are extremely rare. The Army would be very interested in acquiring them. We don't have those kinds of funds, but we could accept the gift of a private individual."

The flags' arrival has occasioned some expressions of reverence.

"The connection with Veterans Day is very important," said Salvatore F. Tarantino, captain and commander of Sheldon's Horse, a volunteer Connecticut cavalry troop that is a quasi-official modern descendant of the unit that lost a flag to Tarleton.

"It's as if these flags were captured for all those years in England," Mr. Tarantino said, "and now they have come home, and with them the spirit of the men who had to give them up."

Bedford, N.Y., was one town Tarleton's troops raided. The executive director of the Bedford Historical Society, Evelyne H. Ryan, said, "It is thrilling that this artifact from 225 years ago, that had been grabbed and stuffed into a sack and carried with Tarleton's troops, still exists."

To the American soldiers of the Revolutionary War, the standards had similar resonance to that of Roman eagles. "The symbolism of the flags was very powerful," said Marilyn Zoidis, a senior curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Troops pledged their allegiance to states, counties and regimental banners, she said, since "the American flag was not taken into battle at that time."

Dr. Schoelwer said, "The position of flag bearer was a great honor, and many individuals sacrificed their lives to protect their flags."

Colonel Tarleton has been credited with the capture, in 1776, of George Washington's Continental military rival, Gen. Charles Lee, surprised in his nightshirt and slippers at a tavern in Basking Ridge, N.J.

Tarleton was renowned for his daring and for the ferocious speed of his attacks. But he was reviled by the Continentals as "Bloody Ban" and "The Butcher" for his role in the Battle of Waxsaws, near the border of North and South Carolina, on May 29, 1780.

It was in that conflict, Sotheby's says, that the three Virginia flags were captured.

Tarleton's cavalry overtook a Continental force of Virginians. Later, he personally reported that he gave them an initial summons to surrender and that they declined. A contemporary Continental account, however, described the subsequent melee as a "massacre" and said that despite the hoisting of a Virginian surrender flag, Tarleton's forces created "indiscriminate carnage never surpassed by the ruthless atrocities of the most barbarous savages."

In 1781, Tarleton lost half his army in the Battle of Cowpens, and he surrendered at Yorktown later that year.

Tarleton was accorded a hero's welcome upon his return to England in 1782. He was painted then by Reynolds, who depicted him in the heat of battle, with a pile of crumpled, generic Continental flags in the dust at his feet. Tarleton finished his military career as a major general.

In the telephone interview, Captain Tarleton Fagan said his ancestor "has been given a much worse name than he should have" for the Waxsaws bloodshed. "His horse was shot from under him, and his troops thought he'd been killed," his descendant said. Angered, they "went to town and butchered people - which was monstrous - and Tarleton got the blame for it."

The cavalryman's reputation was hardly enhanced by Hollywood's 2000 film "The Patriot," starring Mel Gibson, in which the exceptionally evil British commander, Col. William Tavington, was based in part on Tarleton. Captain Tarleton Fagan dismissed the film characterization as "pure make-believe."

A former British Army grenadier who served in Malta and Cyprus, Captain Tarleton Fagan said his family's flags had never been publicly displayed. A special export license was required to ship the antiquities from Britain.

Sotheby's claims that the provisions of the Treaty of Paris in 1782 would prevent anyone from suing to recover them as stolen artwork.

It is hard to let the flags go, Captain Tarleton Fagan said.

"But when there comes a time when their value becomes so disproportionate that you can no longer insure them and give them care, well, a decision must be made," he said. "It was a decision not taken lightly."

Chandler Saint, a historic preservationist in Litchfield, Conn., who has been an antique and fine-arts dealer, said he and several associates tried to buy the Tarleton flags several years ago. But he said the American Revolution "has never caught the public's imagination like the Civil War has."

Jennifer L. Jones, chairwoman of the Military History and Diplomacy Division at the National Museum of American History, said of Sotheby's: "They can put any price that they would like on them, but they are worth what someone is willing to pay for them."

Mr. Saint said it was possible that the Connecticut flag wasn't captured but instead was looted by Tarleton's troops. "It could affect the value, if the flag doesn't have the mystique of the great battle," Mr. Saint said.

Even if the Connecticut flag was looted, however, Mr. Tarantino, commander of the contemporary cavalry troop, said, "It was really used by the soldiers who won our independence - it is an authentic piece of the Revolution."

Many of those interviewed hoped the flags could remain in the United States. "They don't mean as much to anyone but Americans," Mr. Redden said. "I'll eat my hat if they don't remain in the country."
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