Militia flag from 1833 to return to state

The State ^ | Mar. 17, 2003 | R. KEVIN DIETRICH

[aomagrat]

An early symbol of South Carolina's independent streak has been returned to the state after more than 160 years.

An 1833 flag from a militia group called the Abbeville Dragoons has been donated to the Confederate Relic Room and Museum by a Mississippi woman whose great-great-great-grandfather left South Carolina with the flag in 1859.

Officials probably will send the banner to a Maryland flag conservation company for preservation, then put it on display in the museum in about six weeks.

The hand-painted silk banner, 20¼ inches by 25¾ inches, shows a palmetto tree and the state seal on the front. Its back features storm clouds, the phrase "Millions for Defence, not a Cent for Tribute'' and the date, 1833, all apparent references to the Nullification Crisis, in which South Carolina threatened to secede in the early 1830s because of Northern-backed tariffs.

"I've been here since the late 1970s, and I've never seen a flag like it,'' museum curator John Bigham said. "It's a gem of antebellum South Carolina militia history.''

The Relic Room has about 75 flags, but the Abbeville Dragoons' banner is the oldest it has ever received. The Abbeville flag is believed to be the only known militia flag of its era in South Carolina, museum director Allen Roberson said.

The flag is in excellent condition, having been folded and stored in a trunk for more than a century. It could be worth more than $25,000, Roberson said.

Karen Taylor of Terry, Miss., donated the flag to the Relic Room last month. Her great-great-great-grandfather, Joseph John Dickson, is believed to have been a captain in the Abbeville Dragoons until he moved to Mississippi shortly before the Civil War.

"I've always wanted to find a place where the flag could be protected and displayed, and when I presented it to the Relic Room, I knew we'd really found a home for it,'' Taylor said.

Taylor said she never considered peddling the flag despite its value.

"I would never have thought of selling it; who knows where it would have ended up?'' she said.

Information about the Abbeville Dragoons is almost nonexistent, but militia groups were a mainstay in the United States for much of the country's early history.

Theoretically, all male citizens were members of the militia and were required to have certain equipment and to meet at stated times for drill, USC history professor Clyde Wilson said.

The Nullification Crisis arose during President Andrew Jackson's first term in office. As industry in the North expanded, it looked toward Southern markets, rich with cash from the lucrative agricultural business, to buy the North's manufactured goods.

However, it often was cheaper for the South to buy goods abroad. In order to protect Northern industries, Jackson put a tariff on many of the imported goods that could be manufactured in the North.

South Carolina saw the tariffs as a threat to states' liberties and passed the Ordinance of Nullification in November 1832, refusing to collect the tariff and threatening to withdraw from the Union. Jackson, a native South Carolinian who lived in Tennessee before his election, responded by ordering federal troops to Charleston.

"There was a great deal of militia activity in the state during the Nullification Crisis,'' Wilson said. "After all, the president threatened in December 1832 to attack the state.''

The crisis was averted when Congress revised the tariffs in February 1833.

Many militia units, including the Charleston Light Dragoons and the Richland Volunteer Rifle Company, went into the Confederate army three decades later, when South Carolina made good on its threat to leave the Union.

Taylor's great-great-great-grandfather died in 1879. He didn't serve in the Civil War, but his son died from wounds suffered at Petersburg, Va., she said.

[dixie sass]

Wonderful relic to be returning to the State. What a great history we have!

[PeaRidge]

Lincoln and his ilk would tolerate slavery but not the inability to collect tariffs.