Gadsden Flag Timeline: 1754 to Today

The Gadsden flag’s story starts two decades before the Revolution, with Benjamin Franklin’s snake cartoon, and runs through the Continental Navy, the Civil War, the modern Navy, and today’s politics. Here are the key dates, each drawn from the sources listed at the bottom. For the full narrative, read our Gadsden flag history.

Colonial Roots

• February 16, 1724: Christopher Gadsden is born in Charleston, South Carolina. Read his biography.
• May 9, 1754: Franklin’s “Join, or Die” woodcut, a snake cut into eight labeled pieces, appears in the Pennsylvania Gazette during the French and Indian War. More on “Join, or Die”.
• 1757: Gadsden is first elected to South Carolina’s Commons House of Assembly.
• 1765: Gadsden attends the Stamp Act Congress in New York. Colonists revive “Join, or Die” to protest the Stamp Act, notably in The Constitutional Courant.
• 1767: Gadsden’s wharf on Charleston’s Cooper River is completed. It becomes a major landing point for the slave trade.
• 1774: Gadsden is elected to the First Continental Congress.
• July 7, 1774: Paul Revere adds the snake to the Massachusetts Spy masthead.

The Revolution

• October 13, 1775: The Continental Congress creates the Continental Navy.
• December 20, 1775: Gadsden’s yellow rattlesnake flag is unfurled on the mainmast of Commodore Esek Hopkins’s flagship Alfred, according to Wikipedia.
• December 27, 1775: The Pennsylvania Journal prints the “American Guesser” letter, attributed to Franklin, explaining the rattlesnake and “Don’t tread on me.” What the motto means.
• January 1776: Hopkins’s “Signals for the American Fleet” refers to “The Standard” (the Gadsden flag) and the “strip’d Jack.”
• February 9, 1776: Gadsden presents “an elegant standard” to the South Carolina Provincial Congress: a yellow field, a rattlesnake “in the attitude of going to strike,” and “DON’T TREAD ON ME!”
• March 23, 1776: John Jay writes that Congress has “made no order as yet” on colors, and doubts the rattlesnake device was “generally adopted by the fleet.”
• August 1776: Thomas Hart publishes a London print of “Hopkins” with a striped rattlesnake flag. The NHHC calls the portrait “obviously fanciful.”
• February 27, 1777: Continental Navy officers propose a captain’s epaulet embroidered with a rattlesnake and “don’t tread on me.”
• October 9, 1778: Franklin and John Adams write that South Carolina’s warships fly “a rattlesnake in the middle of thirteen stripes.”
• 1780–1781: After Charleston falls, Gadsden is imprisoned at St. Augustine, spending 42 weeks in solitary confinement at the Castillo de San Marcos.

The 19th Century

• August 28, 1805: Gadsden dies in Charleston.
• 1860–1862: Secessionists use versions of the rattlesnake flag, including at an 1860 Savannah rally, and the Confederate Navy flies a variant. Union imagery answers with snakes being stomped or eaten by eagles.
• About 1880: Admiral George Henry Preble’s History of the Flag of the United States popularizes the striped rattlesnake design now known as the First Navy Jack.

The Modern Era

• 1970s: Libertarians adopt the Gadsden flag as a symbol of individual rights and limited government.
• October 13, 1975 – December 31, 1976: The U.S. Navy flies the rattlesnake jack for the Bicentennial.
• August 18, 1980: The Navy reserves the rattlesnake jack for its longest-serving active ship.
• 1991: Metallica releases “Don’t Tread on Me” on its self-titled album.
• May 31, 2002: The Secretary of the Navy orders the rattlesnake jack fleet-wide for the Global War on Terrorism. Most ships raise it on September 11, 2002.
• 2009–2010: The Gadsden flag becomes a staple of Tea Party rallies. In March 2010, lawmakers unfurl one from a Capitol balcony during the health care vote.
• 2014: An EEOC decision in a Postal Service complaint draws national attention. The EEOC says the flag “originated in the Revolutionary War in a non-racial context.” That same year, Alabama becomes the seventh state to approve a Gadsden license plate. See license plates by state.
• June 4, 2019: The Navy returns to the union jack. USS Blue Ridge keeps the rattlesnake jack as the oldest active warship.
• 2022: Florida introduces a “Don’t Tread on Me” license plate.

Explore the variations the flag has taken along the way, learn how to fly one, and find flags at the Our Gadsden Flag store.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was the Gadsden flag first flown?

Wikipedia reports it was unfurled on Commodore Esek Hopkins’s flagship Alfred on December 20, 1775. Gadsden presented it to the South Carolina Provincial Congress on February 9, 1776.

How old is the Gadsden flag?

It dates to 1775–1776, about 250 years ago. The rattlesnake symbol it uses goes back to Franklin’s 1754 “Join, or Die” cartoon.

When did the Gadsden flag become a modern political symbol?

Libertarians adopted it in the 1970s, and it became widely known through Tea Party rallies starting in 2009.

When did the Navy fly the rattlesnake jack?

Fleet-wide in 1975–76 for the Bicentennial and again from 2002 to June 4, 2019. Since then only the oldest active warship flies it.

Sources

1. Naval History and Heritage Command, “The U.S. Navy’s Jack.” https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/heritage/banners/usnavy-jack.html
2. Wikipedia, “Gadsden flag.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsden_flag
3. Wikipedia, “Christopher Gadsden.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Gadsden
4. Wikipedia, “Join, or Die.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join,_or_Die
5. Wikipedia, “First Navy Jack.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Navy_Jack
6. Library of Congress, “Join, or die” (1754). https://www.loc.gov/item/2002695523/
7. “The Rattlesnake as a Symbol of America” (1775), transcription. https://greatseal.com/symbols/rattlesnake.html
8. South Carolina Encyclopedia, “Gadsden, Christopher.” https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/gadsden-christopher/
9. The New Yorker, “The Shifting Symbolism of the Gadsden Flag.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-shifting-symbolism-of-the-gadsden-flag
10. NPR, “Tea Party Adopts ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ Flag” (Mar. 25, 2010) and “A Florida license plate has reopened the debate…” (Aug. 10, 2022). https://www.npr.org/2010/03/25/125184586/tea-party-adopts-dont-tread-on-me-flag · https://www.npr.org/2022/08/10/1116523396/florida-dont-tread-on-me-license-plate-ron-desantis