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2006 SESSION

068328428
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 106
Offered January 11, 2006
Prefiled January 10, 2006
Encouraging the return of the four American Revolutionary War flags captured by Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton in 1779 and 1780 to their rightful homes in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of Connecticut.
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Patron-- Morgan
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Referred to Committee on Rules
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WHEREAS, four battle flags, three from a Virginia battle, were captured in 1779 and 1780 during the Revolutionary War by Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton; and

WHEREAS, until recently, the flags have hung in Hampshire, England, at the home of Captain Christopher Tarleton Fagan, the great-great-great-great nephew of Colonel Tarleton; and

WHEREAS, Captain Fagan, a former Grenadier Guards officer, claims that the flags have been in his family for 225 years, but he can no longer afford to insure them because of their enormous value; and

WHEREAS, the flags are scheduled to be auctioned at Sotheby's in New York on "Flag Day," June 14, 2006, and are expected to bring between $4 million and $10 million; seldom, if ever, have flags of such historical importance and rarity been sold at public auction; and

WHEREAS, only about 30 American revolutionary battle flags survive, and in most cases, only fragments of those flags remain and are preserved and exhibited in museums; and

WHEREAS, the four flags captured by Colonel Tarleton and owned by Captain Fagan remain in excellent condition, bear the emblem of their infantry or cavalry regiment, and are well-documented historically; and

WHEREAS, one of the four flags was captured from a Connecticut cavalry regiment in Westchester County, New York, on July 2, 1779; and 

WHEREAS, on May 29, 1780, the three Virginia flags were captured in a controversial battle on the North Carolina-South Carolina line at Waxhaws, where Tarleton's troops crushed Colonel Abraham Buford’s force of about 350 Continentals, consisting of the 3rd Virginia Regiment and two companies of the 2nd Virginia Regiment; and

WHEREAS, the facts of what happened after Buford’s regiment raised a flag of surrender at Waxhaw are disputed--Americans contended that Colonel Tarleton ordered the slaughter of more than 100 Virginia soldiers who had already surrendered; while Colonel Tarleton maintained that his Loyalist troops ran amok when they believed he had been killed after the truce was declared; and

WHEREAS, Colonel Tarleton’s alleged conduct during his command of the battle came to symbolize British cruelty in the Revolutionary War and earned him the epithet “Bloody Ban or “The Butcher”; and

WHEREAS, after the British surrender at Yorktown, Colonel Tarleton, with the four flags, returned home to England as a hero; and

WHEREAS, Colonel Tarleton’s military exploits were commemorated by Sir Joshua Reynolds in a famous portrait of the colonel painted in 1782, in which the captured American flags appear at his feet; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, That Captain Christopher Tarleton Fagan, the great-great-great-great nephew of Colonel Tarleton, be encouraged to return the four American Revolutionary War flags captured by Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton in 1779 and 1780 to their rightful homes in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of Connecticut; and, be it

RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Clerk of the House of Delegates transmit a copy of this resolution to J.E.B. Stuart, IV, president of the Sons of the Revolution-Virginia Society, and to Patricia Hatfield Mayer, regent of the Virginia Daughters of the American Revolution, in order that they may further disseminate copies of this resolution to their respective constituents so that they may be apprised of the sense of the General Assembly of Virginia in this matter.