Southern History Series: The Gadsden Flag

If you see the Gadsden Flag and your knee jerk reaction is “mainstream conservative Tea Party LARPer,” then you probably aren’t familiar with the American Revolution in the South. The Gadsden Flag was created by Christopher Gadsden who was the leader of the Patriot movement and the Sons of Liberty in South Carolina. He has been described as “the Sam Adams of the South.”

In order to understand how we ended up in the United States and how we got to where we are today, it is starting to dawn on me that we need a long overdue reckoning with the American Revolution. In hindsight, the Revolution is the single most important historical event in Southern history and American history at large and the meaning of the American Revolution has been twisted beyond recognition.

Who were the Founding Fathers of the South? Did they rebel against the British Empire so that their descendants could become woke on transgenderism in the 21st century? What did these men really believe? What motivated them? What were they trying to achieve?

So far, we’ve taken the first tentative steps in this direction by looking at the triumph of the “country ideology” in South Carolina in the decades before the American Revolution. We’ve also seen that “liberty” meant different things in different regions. It was associated with prosperity and growth in South Carolina. It was associated with economic independence and the cultivation of virtue in Tidewater. It essentially meant “leave me the f**k alone” to settlers in the Backcountry.

South Carolina Patriots often fought under the Gadsden Flag and the Moultrie Flag:

What is the meaning of this flag?

The blue background is the color of indigo which was then one of the leading crops of the South Carolina Lowcountry. The white crescent is a heraldic emblem of a younger son and was a symbol of the Lowcountry whose settlers were often the younger sons of families from Britain and Barbados who came to South Carolina in search of land. The crescent also symbolizes prosperity, growth and future opportunity. South Carolina was the wealthiest of the 13 American colonies.

The meaning of the word “liberty” in the middle of the crescent to these men was the country ideology which shaded into classical republicanism. As slaveowners and republicans, they admired the Roman Republic and believed that virtue was the foundation of liberty. From their perspective, the corruption of the British Court in the late 18th century was leading to the loss of their liberty.

South Carolina at this time and for decades thereafter into the 19th century had a cohesive elite and was ruled by consensus. There were no parties. Factionalism was frowned on and these men believed in governing on the basis of the common good of the state.

In the months ahead, we are going to be taking a closer look at Christopher Gadsden, John and Edward Rutledge, Henry Middleton, Charles Pinckney, Henry Laurens and the Founding Fathers of South Carolina, as well as their counterparts in the other Southern colonies.

About Hunter Wallace 12390 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

7 Comments

  1. DON’T TREAD ON US
    I think I may have a solution for all these Confederate monument vandals/destroyers. Use ancestry dot com and find-a-grave to track down where the headstones of all these anti-South activists who want to destroy confederate memorials and put up a map like SPLC has and show precisely where the headstones of all these Antifa/Communists/etc deceased relatives are located — for their father, mother, brothers, sisters, grandfathers, grandmothers, etc and let the public know exactly where they can be located. I am sure the SPLC doesn’t mind if vandals use their information to destroy or deface the Confederate monuments using their handy maps and other identifying information so I am sure they won’t mind a list of all the headstones of the relatives of these Left-wing anti-South-hater radicals showing exactly where they are located. It would be a crying shame if one of these liberals had about 20 headstones of deceased family members suddenly turned to piles of broken stone.
    DON’T TREAD ON US

      • No, I would prefer the SPLC take their hate map down and quit giving license to vandals to take the law into their own hands and destroy Southern symbols. When the war started the US Congress of mainly the Northern states left passed a resolution where they clearly stated their reason for waging war against the South:

        “Resolved…That this war is not being prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, not for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or ESTABLISHED INSTITUTIONS of those states [i.e. slavery], but to defend the maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.”
        — July 22, 1861

        No mention of doing away with the institution of slavery, but just the opposite — just leave the established institutions alone — “nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or ESTABLISHED INSTITUTIONS of those states”

        And “this war is not being prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, not for any purpose of conquest or subjugation”. But the SPLC and the ones they can inflame into attacking the old South, think they have the right to now conquer the South and destroy its symbols 150 years after the fact.

        • “Resolved…That this war is not being prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, not for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or ESTABLISHED INSTITUTIONS of those states [i.e. slavery], but to defend the maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.”
          — July 22, 1861

          They were liars, hypocrites and criminals.

          “think they have the right to now conquer the South and destroy its symbols 150 years after the fact.”

          Most people in the North think this, if only subconsciously. They also think that “America®” is just Yankeedom, and that the other 34 states are their colonial territories and that the people who live in these states are their subordinate subjects, subhuman, dysgenic monsters, and their enemies.

          Which is why they’ll never be able to trow off the Jewish yoke as long as they keep thinking this way. Which is why the Jews keep agitating the rift between Yankeedom and the rest of America.

          If the sixteen states that make up the North didn’t control the general government completely, the Jews wouldn’t have bothered to settle there, or they’d have moved on south and west.

          • This “nice”, “soft”, “true” resolution by the “fair” North occurred the day after 1st Manassas. The North earlier was bragging about “on to Richmond” but had to change to “back to Washington” when their “bull” had to literally “run” home in defeat instead.

            Wished the South had chased them all the way to Washington and forced an end to the war while they had the chance.

  2. haha you removed my comment because i dont entertain the ridiculous idea that we can vote and save our race and this nation.
    What a joke this site has become…

  3. For some reason, Lincoln worshipping, South hating, Neo-Yankees seem to hate this flag as much as SJWs and Jews do.

    Of course, being the only real and true “patriotic Americans,” they hate George Washington and the Constitution, too.

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