Hello Glenn,
Can you advise the location of these Official Reports? If they are in the SC archives do you know the file number?
My stuff came from the Official booklet on the SC State flag, the research was done by them.
Thanks,
Tom Martin
[There are however several official reports of a "red palmetto flag" flying on Morris Island during the period Jan - April 1861. The first of these is of course associated with the Citadel Academy cadets firing on the Star of the West - Jan 9, 1861. There are at least three eye witness accounts of those on board the Star of the West seeing a "red palmetto flag" flying near the masked battery on Morris Island just before it opened fire on the ship. And JO Foster, who saw the cadets at the time, wrote: that "The troops...are quartered in the buildings constituting the small-pox hospital, over one of which flies their flag a red field on which is a palmetto tree." And reports further "the flag on Fort Johnson is similar, as is also the one on Castle Pinckney."]