The state flag of South Carolina was officially adopted in 1861. It has a white crescent and a white palmetto tree on a blue ground. Three white crescents (on a blue background) were first used on a South Carolina banner protesting the Stamp Act in 1765. In 1775, Colonel William Moultrie designed a banner for South Carolina troops; it had a white crescent on a blue field. When South Carolina seceded from the Union, the palmetto tree was added to the flag. The palmetto tree was chosen because this tree had helped South Carolinians defeat the British in a battle at Sullivan's Island (during the Revolutionary War). The South Carolinians built a fort out of palmetto wood, and when the British fired cannonballs at the fort, instead of knocking the fort down, the soft palmetto wood just absorbed the cannonballs.
