Flag of Gadsden (USA c. 1775)

The flag bears the name of Christopher Gadsden, a merchant and delegate from South Carolina. In February 1776 he presented it to Commodore Esek Hopkins, the first commander-in-chief of the Continental fleet, who flew it as a personal mark on his flagship. At the same time the first companies of the Continental Marines carried drums with the same device. It was never an officially adopted flag — it belonged among the many signs that either caught on or vanished in the confusion of the war's beginning. The rattlesnake later returned to the jack of the US Navy, which flew from the bows of warships from 1975 to 1976 and from 2002 to 2019.

Meaning

On a yellow field a rattlesnake coils ready to strike, and beneath it stands the sentence DONT TREAD ON ME. The rattlesnake as an emblem of the colonies goes back to a cartoon that Benjamin Franklin championed: an animal that never strikes first but strikes back fatally when trodden upon, and whose rattle is a warning. Franklin also pointed out that the snake has no eyelids and therefore never stops watching. The yellow carried no heraldic meaning; it made sure that snake and lettering could be made out from a distance at sea.