Flags in Colonial Charleston

    

• Flags seen in Charlestonⁱ and the Blue Ensign

i Flags seen in Charleston

Prior to 1707 – The English Flag: St. George's Cross – a red cross on a white field

Post 1707 British Flag: The flag formally adopted at that time combined the red cross of St. George with the white saltire (X) of St. Andrew on a blue field, the product of which became known as the Union Jack.

Red Ensign on British Naval Ships and on merchant ships with a home port in Britain – Neither the warships of the Royal Navy nor merchant vessels in private commerce were permitted to fly the plain Union Jack, however, because that flag was considered to be part of the exclusive heraldry of the royal family. Instead, British ships flew what known as the “Red Ensign,” a rectangular red flag with the Union Jack placed in the dexter canton; that is, in the upper corner of the field next to the flagstaff.

Blue Ensign on Charleston merchant ships – In the American colonies, provincial vessels and provincial fortifications often flew a modified version of the Red Ensign. In Charleston harbor between 1707 and 1775, one would have seen a blue version, complete with the Union Jack in the dexter canton, flying from the stern of merchant ships and above the forts and bastions around the harbor. Bishop Roberts’s watercolor painting of the Charleston waterfront, created in the mid-1730s and now in the collections of Colonial Williamsburg, clearly depicts a number of these “blue ensigns” that were not officially recognized by the British government of that era

The Origin of the State – Crescent Flag in 1775

During the early morning hours of September 15th, 1775, a detachment from the South Carolina 2nd Regiment captured Fort Johnson on James Island without resistance. In the course of the following week, other companies from both the 1st and 2nd Regiments moved across Charleston harbor and encamped around the fort. Here, I’ll let William Moultrie tell his famous story about the creation of South Carolina’s state flag. At that moment, Colonel Moultrie was in command of both the 1st and 2nd Regiments, as Christopher Gadsden, colonel of the 1st Regiment, was then in Philadelphia attending the Continental Congress. In his memoirs, published in 1802, Moultrie recalled the creation of the state flag in the following words:

“A little time after we were in possession of Fort Johnson [that is, late September or October 1775], it was thought necessary to have a flag for the purpose of signals: (as there was no national or state flag at that time) I was desired by the Council of Safety to have one made, upon which, as the state troops were clothed in blue, and the fort was garrisoned by the first and second regiments, who wore a silver crescent on the front of their caps; I had a large blue flag made with a crescent in the dexter corner, to be in uniform with the troops: This was the first American flag which was displayed in South Carolina.”

. . . .

The Addition of the Palmetto Tree in 1776

Copies of South Carolina’s new provincial flag followed Colonel William Moultrie from Fort Johnson in 1775 to the unfinished palmetto-log fort constructed on Sullivan’s Island in the spring of 1776. It flew proudly above the fort’s spongy ramparts during the ferocious battle of June 28th, when a squadron of the British Navy under the command of Sir Peter Parker failed to batter their way into Charleston harbor.[14] Two days after their humiliating failure, a British artillery officer named Thomas James completed a sketch of the resilient American fort and its novel flag, and presented his work to Commodore Parker. Parker forwarded the sketch to his superiors in London, and a copy was engraved for publication that August. The flag in William Faden’s engraving, which you can see on the website of the Boston Public Library, is rather too small to see clearly, but the crescent flag is clearly visible in Colonel James’s original sketch, which survives in the collections of the National Archive in suburban London.

. . . South Carolinians of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century remembered the original state flag as a plain blue banner with a upward-tilting crescent. Visual representations of this device from the years following the American Revolution are now scarce, but veterans of the war apparently informed their children and grandchildren of the crescent’s correct orientation, and the Palmetto Society paraded the famous flag every summer from 1777 onward. South Carolina lawyer and artist John Blake White (1781–1859), for example, was one of many men who passed along valuable stories of the Revolution that might otherwise have been lost. White’s 1826 painting of the Battle of Sullivan's Island, created to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the event, depicts Sergeant William Jasper raising the provincial flag above the palmetto-log fort. A close inspection of the painting, which now hangs in the halls of the United States Senate, reveals an upturned white crescent, in which we might discern a series of letters spelling the word “Liberty.”

In the aftermath of the Battle of Sullivan’s Island in 1776, South Carolinians apparently began a tradition of adding an image of an upright palmetto tree in the center of blue field of the state’s unofficial flag. Few representations of this “palmetto flag,” as it became known, have survived from the first half of the nineteenth century, but the numerous references to it found in surviving newspapers suggest that it was a common design. In contrast to the elusive crescent, the symbolism of the palmetto tree is rather obvious. The resilient trunk of the humble and ubiquitous palmetto contributed to the American success on the 28th of June 1776, and the tree merited a place of honor on the state’s traditional but unofficial heraldic banner.