And - from this website -
Dating back to 1765, the South Carolina State Flag
reminds us of its role in the American Revolution and maintains its
place in the annals of the Civil War with a design that was formulated
as a National banner when the state seceded from the union on December
20, 1860.
Components of the current state flag were first seen
in 1765, on a banner carried by South Carolina protesters of the Stamp
Act. The banner that the protesters hoisted displayed three white
crescents on a blue background. Ten years later in 1775, Colonel William
Moultrie was asked by the South Carolina Revolutionary Council of
Safety to design a banner for the use of South Carolina troops. Colonel
Moultrie chose a simple and direct design that displayed a crescent on a
blue field. The new flag was the same blue color of the soldier's
uniforms and the crescent echoed the symbol that the soldiers wore on
the front of their caps.
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Almost 100 years later, South Carolina seceded from
the Union it had fought to create. A new banner was needed to fly above
the newly created nation. Many designs were reviewed but the General
Assembly settled on one simple change to Moultrie's Revolutionary War
design. A Palmetto tree was added and centered on the blue field. The
Palmetto, the South Carolina State Tree, had been attributed as
instrumental in Colonel Moultrie's defense of Sullivan's Island against
an attack by British warships in June, 1776. Cannonballs fired at the
fort from the British ships could not destroy the walls of the fort
which were built of Palmetto logs. Instead, the cannonballs simply sank
into the soft, tough Palmetto wood.
The flag that flies over the state of South Carolina
today is of the same design that flew over the independent South
Carolina during the Civil War.
Very interesting! I'd often wondered where the idea of the Palmetto tree came from.
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