Flag of South Carolina
South Carolina’s flag is indigo blue with a white crescent in the upper corner by the pole and a white palmetto tree in the centre. The General Assembly says the blue and the crescent come from the uniforms and cap badges of Colonel William Moultrie’s troops in the Revolution, and the palmetto from his defence of a palmetto-log fort on Sullivan’s Island against the British fleet on 28 June 1776.
How to read it
The present flag was adopted by the General Assembly on 28 January 1861, by a resolution that made it “blue with a white palmetto tree upright thereon, and a white crescent in the upper corner”, adding the palmetto to Moultrie’s Revolutionary flag; Representative Robert Barnwell Rhett Jr. wrote that wording, the South Carolina Encyclopedia says. The Code of Laws names the colour but not its shade: section 1-1-710 (2008) makes “the color indigo blue worn on the uniform of Colonel William Moultrie’s soldiers and adopted as the background of the South Carolina State flag” the official colour of the state. No law fixes exactly how the palmetto and crescent are drawn. When a legislative study committee offered designs to standardise the flag in March 2021, WIS reported that there was no standard way to print them. The palmetto is also the state tree.
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Moultrie’s flag, 1775 or 1776
The two state sources give different years. The General Assembly’s Student Connection site dates Moultrie’s design to 1775. The South Carolina Encyclopedia says that in 1776 the Council of Safety ordered Moultrie to make a signal flag and gave him blue cloth, and that he put the silver crescent his troops wore on their hats in the upper corner by the staff. Both agree the palmetto was not on the Revolutionary flag. It went onto the state seal instead.
The crescent turned in 1910
The 1861 flag had the crescent’s horns pointing upward. In 1910 the General Assembly provided for flying the flag over public buildings and had Clemson College make the flags as the 1861 resolution prescribed, with the design approved by the secretary of the Historical Commission, Alexander S. Salley, who chose even the shade of blue. The one major change was to move the crescent closer to the staff, with its horns turned toward the staff instead of upward. The South Carolina Encyclopedia says the flag has changed little since 1910.
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The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with curves and waves or squares and rectangles.
Sources
- South Carolina Code of Laws, Title 1, Chapter 1, Article 9 (State Emblems), S.C. Code Ann. §§ 1-1-630, 1-1-660, South Carolina General Assembly (Legislative Services Agency), § 1-1-660; § 1-1-710 and history line
- Seals, Flags, House and Senate Emblems (SC Student Connection), South Carolina General Assembly Student Connection, "Seals, Flags, House and Senate Emblems", South Carolina General Assembly (Student Connection), State Flag
- State Flag (South Carolina Encyclopedia), Roberta VH Copp, “State Flag”, South Carolina Encyclopedia, University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies, Article text
- New designs proposed for official SC state flag (WIS), WIS (Columbia, S.C.), 17 March 2021, WIS-TV, Article text
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 14, 2026. How we research
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