"Bloody Ban" or "Bloody Tarleton" in a bloody dreadful portrait.
Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds
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We may need them again.
Back where they belong.
While that was my first thought as well, especially as one who grew up in Valley Forge, I have second thoughts.
Given the current trend of affairs and sentiment in this country, perhaps they are safer in private hands.
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Very kewl. Thanx.
Every school bus within driving distance needs to be packed to the gills and headed to see these flags when they go on display.
Thanks Pharmboy. I wondered what this meant:
“notorious British cavalry leader Banestre Tarleton”
Found this hissy fit:
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/071100/mov_0711000005.shtml
“Yes, Tarleton was a ruthless soldier,” Clein added, “but the film goes a lot farther than that and assassinates his character altogether.”
No evidence exists that Tarleton was involved in infanticide or any incidents such as the church arson and murders, said Scott Withrow, historian at South Carolina’s Cowpens National Battlefield, where the Redcoats were defeated in 1781.
“As far as I know, it did not happen,” said Withrow, though he noted Tarleton had a reputation for brutality. “Somehow the Patriot forces latched onto Tarleton and used him for propaganda. The Patriot army were masters of this at that time and they built him up as a hated person.”
These two are from an American source:
http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/williamsburg/dp-news_revwarflags_1222dec22,0,7042608.story
...Rejecting Tarleton’s demand for his surrender, Col. Abraham Buford held his troops’ fire until it was too late, then watched as the overwhelming British charge wrenched his position into chaos...
...”So prized were these hard-won banners that Tarleton sent them back to England long before he surrendered 18 months later as part of the devastating British defeat at Yorktown.”
Three years after the Declaration of Independence was signed. What a quagmire!
Given the sanctimony and self-righteousness seen in at least one quote in that hissy fit linked above, this British source turned out to be amusing and ironic:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1792724,00.html
...”Tarleton boasts,” Horace Walpole reported, “of having butchered more men and lain with more women than anyone in the army.” In Reynolds’ studio he encountered the actress Mary Robinson, always known to the world, after a radiant performance in Sheridan’s production of The Winter’s Tale, as Perdita. She had recently been the mistress of the 17-year-old Prince of Wales - the one who became George IV. Someone had bet Tarleton that he couldn’t seduce her, and he didn’t lose bets like that. They stayed more or less together through 15 turbulent years, but often he made life hard for her. In 1783, desperate to escape from his creditors, he suddenly left for France. Perdita, who was pregnant, set off in pursuit. On the way she miscarried, and was left partly paralysed, which ended her stage career. But by now she was also established as a novelist and poet: her output, punctuated by adoring tributes to Tarleton, was successful enough to help pay his debts... The issue that roused him most was slavery. Tarleton was fervently for it. He argued that the economy of Liverpool would be ruined without it (his own family had made its fortune out of the slave trade) and maintained that, in any case, the slaves themselves were happy with their condition. “The common sense of the empire,” he claimed, “will strangle this modern attempt at mistaken philanthropy.” In time he broke with Perdita, whose bitterness against him permeated the rest of her life. Then, in his mid-40s, he married a girl of 20 - more specifically a rich girl of 20... The flags he had captured in the days of his glory remained in his family’s keeping. Captain Christopher Tarleton Fagan, who is selling them now, is his great-great-great-great-nephew. He’s sorry to let them go, he told an American newspaper, but he can no longer afford the insurance. [from 2006]
from the National Park Service:
http://www.nps.gov/archive/cowp/tarleton.htm
Traditionally, Tarleton was seen as a “butcher” when , it was said, America forces under Buford laid down their arms in an attempt to surrender yet the British continued their assault. From then on, his reputation grew and “Tarleton’s quarter”13, in effect, came to mean “no quarter.”
“Tarleton’s quarter” was to become a rallying cry at the Battle of Cowpens. Tarleton, then only twenty-six, had been charged with covering the Carolina upcountry against Patriot guerillas. Specifically, he was to seek out and destroy a threat to his rear, a wing of the American Southern Army, commanded by General Daniel Morgan. By January 12, 1781, he was closing in on Morgan, pushing his men on, fording the rain-swollen Enoree, Tyger, and Pacolet Rivers. Morgan, on the other hand, suddenly halted a desperate retreat, was joined by more militia, and parlayed the fear and hatred of Tarleton into victory at Cowpens in the South Carolina Upcountry.
At Cowpens, January 17, 1781, Morgan appeared to take into account Tarleton’s tendency to rush the attack. His collapsing lines (skirmishers, militia, and Continentals14) brought the tired (having marched since two in the morning) but confident British in prematurely, in effect, exposing them to heavy fire. As the Continentals pinned the British down, militia cavalry would crush them in a flank attack. A mistaken command to retreat drew the British in even more, and, when the retreat was stopped, the Continental line turned and fired with devastating results. In the ensuing panic, the American cavalry, already engaged in battle, flanked the British left, leading to double envelopment and victory and a turning point in the war in the South.
At battle’s end, American cavalry leader William Washington, in mad pursuit of the defiant Tarleton along the Green River Road, engaged the British commander in a dramatic hand-to-hand encounter, in which Washington barely escaped with his life. With the approach of American riflemen, Tarleton, with fifty-four of his supporters, abandoned the battle and fled east toward the British camp, never to be caught up with.
Tarleton would draw criticism from older officers who believed he lacked “military maturity.” Held by some to be personally responsible for the death of some fine officers and veteran troops, Tarleton subsequently submitted his resignation but it was not accepted.
[okay, I hate him now, too. Figures that his resignation was not accepted — the Crown needed a butcher to do its hideous bidding]
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The story of the philosophy and actions that lead up to and through our revolution and the establishment of our nation on a firm footing is one that has been obscured and ignored by our education system and our media. Every once in a great while the light shines trough such as the A&E TV movie “The Crossing”. Our children are purposefully being dumbed down into easy to handle chattle instead of being molded into free thinking individuals.
While I was attending some training at Ft. Monmouth, NJ in the early 70’s one of our training officers was a NATO exchange officer. One day he boasted to us that his regiment still had the American battle flag that had flown over Bunker Hill. One hard charging infantry officer in our class from Boston was quick to point out that we still had the hill.
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