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Home – Founding Fathers & American History – Revolutionary-Era South Carolina’s Mantra: ‘Be Cool and Do Mischief’ 

Revolutionary-Era South Carolina’s Mantra: ‘Be Cool and Do Mischief’ 

On Feb. 9, 1776, Christopher Gadsden stood before South Carolina’s Provincial Congress in Charleston with what the congressional record called an “elegant standard,” a yellow flag bearing a rattlesnake poised to strike and four words beneath it: “DON’T TREAD ON ME” 

The story of that flag takes us into a fascinating stage of South Carolina’s journey. For a decade, South Carolinians had learned to resist British authority through protests, boycotts, petitions, and political organization. Now South Carolina was about to learn that resisting authority was one thing, and defending that resistance was another. 

By 1775, South Carolina’s resistance had developed into an alternative government. The Provincial Congress increasingly assumed governmental functions, organized militia units, secured arms and ammunition, and created a Council of Safety with extraordinary executive powers. The colony was no longer merely protesting royal authority. It was beginning to exercise authority of its own. 

The transformation was taking place in churches as well as political assemblies. On Feb. 17, the Provincial Congress gathered at St. Philip’s Church in Charleston for a day of “fasting, humiliation, and prayer.” The delegates asked the church’s rector, the Rev. Robert Smith, to preach.  

His sermon placed the political crisis within a distinctly Christian framework, linking the defense of the colonists’ “undoubted rights” with religious and moral obligations. Smith’s message revealed just how deeply the coming conflict had begun to enter South Carolina’s churches. 

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But South Carolina was hardly united behind the revolutionary movement. 

Charleston was the political and commercial center of the colony, but a very different South Carolina was found beyond it. Outside the Lowcountry plantations and rice fields lay a vast backcountry of farms and settlements scattered along rivers, creeks, and rough roads that........

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