Flag of South Carolina

What the flag shows

• The indigo-blue field. It matches the blue uniforms of Moultrie’s South Carolina troops. Indigo blue is also the official state color.
• The crescent. In the upper corner by the staff, copying the silver crescent badge the 1st and 2nd Regiments wore on their caps.
• The palmetto. A white palmetto tree in the center, honoring the palmetto-log fort on Sullivan’s Island that withstood the British fleet on June 28, 1776.

Moultrie’s flag

In 1775 and 1776 the Council of Safety supplied blue cloth, and Colonel William Moultrie had a blue flag made with a crescent in the corner by the staff. It flew over the fort on Sullivan’s Island during the battle of June 28, 1776, when its staff was shot away and Sergeant William Jasper rescued it. The Palmetto Regiment raised for the Mexican War in the 1840s also carried a blue banner, and a medal later given to its veterans showed a palmetto in an oval on the flag.

Adding the palmetto

After South Carolina seceded at the start of the Civil War, a joint committee of the legislature first proposed a white flag with a green palmetto and a blue canton. Instead, after about a week of debate, an amendment by Representative Robert Barnwell Rhett Jr. for a blue flag with a white palmetto and crescent won, and it was approved on January 28, 1861.

Settling the design

The Reconstruction legislature ordered the US flag and the 1861 state flag flown over the State House. Later proposals to turn the field purple, and a 1906 suggestion by Senator Benjamin Tillman to add the coat of arms, both failed. A 1910 act provided for flying the flag over public buildings and had Clemson College make the flags, with the design approved by Alexander Salley of the state Historical Commission; the crescent was moved nearer the staff, with its horns turned toward the hoist, and the flag has changed little since.

Still no standard design

Surprisingly, no South Carolina law fixes the flag’s exact artwork. A State Flag Study Committee, created in 2019, proposed a standard design in March 2020, but bills to write it into law stalled in 2024.

Rules for the flag

The official pledge, adopted in 1966, reads: “I salute the flag of South Carolina and pledge to the Palmetto State love, loyalty and faith.” By law the flag must be displayed in every public school and flown daily, weather permitting, over the State House and each county courthouse, and desecrating it is a misdemeanor.