Gregg:

You wrote: >>>When South Carolina seceded in December, 1860, the flag that flew over the convention was red, with a blue St. George's Cross adorned by stars and the state coat of arms in the upper left corner.<<<

Can you share with us your documentation? I presume this took place at the state capitol building in Columbia, South Carolina.

This seems to be a slight variant of the "Harvard University" South Carolina sovereignty flag you, Tom Martin, and I were discussing at Harrisburg on Saturday, unless by "state coat of arms" you mean the crescent and palmetto. The "Harvard" flag as I understood it had the crescent and palmetto in the upper left panel. And there were 15 stars affixed to the blue St. George's Cross supposedly representing the 15 states in which slavery was legal.

I had been under the impression that in December 1860 South Carolina first raised the 1832 red swallow tailed flag with crescent and star associated with the secession movement of that earlier time. My source is Glenn Dedmondt's "The Flags of Civil War South Carolina" (Pelican Publishing, Gretna, 2000). I noted just now that Dedmondt states that this swallow tailed flag was raised over the Customs House at Charleston. He does not deal with the "Harvard sovereignty flag" per se but does present a reversed colors blue flag with the same elements that he describes as the Chester County Sovereignty Flag.

The "Palmetto flags" section of the Flags of the Confederacy website [under Secession Flags] is not yet on line. The State Flags section describes the adoption in January 1861 of what is essentially the modern blue palmetto state flag of South Carolina.

Hugh Simmons