The Gadsden flag with a yellow field depicting a timber rattlesnake coiled with its mouth open ready to strike and sitting on a green patch of grass. Beneath the rattlesnake are the words "DONT TREAD ON ME", written in black.
History[]
The flag is named for Christopher Gadsden, a South Carolina delegate to the Continental Congress and brigadier general in the Continental Army who designed the flag in 1775 during the American Revolution. He gave the flag to Commodore Esek Hopkins, and it was unfurled on the main mast of Hopkins' flagship USS Alfred on December 20, 1775.
Symbolism[]
Its inscription represented a warning by the colonists to the British.