A midnight field, two lighter blues and a streak of white sweeping diagonally, a white six-pointed star in the corner: Columbia's flag, adopted in February 2020, is a contemporary graphic, with no seal and no motto. It says nothing of the fire.
For Columbia was born from a plan and reborn from ashes. Drawn in 1786 as a compromise capital between the coast and the upcountry, it is one of the first American cities laid out before it existed. Then came February 17, 1865: Sherman's troops entered the city. That night, the center caught fire. By morning, dozens of city blocks were nothing but smoking ruins. Columbia paid, more than any other, the price of the Confederacy's fall.
But history would not let go: for half a century the Confederate battle flag flew over the State House dome, a few streets away, until its removal in 2015, after the Charleston massacre.
The current flag, chosen in 2020 after three years of debate, passes through all of this without a word. It flies, calm and official, above a capital twice born, of the plan, then of the fire, and which prefers, on its emblem, to tell nothing.