South Carolina Trivia
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This South Carolina trivia quiz has 138 free questions with answers and covers the Palmetto State from the Lowcountry to the Upstate: Charleston and Columbia, Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie, the palmetto-log walls that bounced British cannonballs, the first state to secede, the Confederate submarine that sank a warship, and the Revolutionary War battle that turned the tide in the South. It also covers what makes the state itself: the Grand Strand and Myrtle Beach's 86 golf courses, Congaree's giant trees, Gullah sweetgrass baskets, the state dance, the state snack, the BMW plant that is America's biggest car exporter, and famous natives from James Brown to Stephen Colbert. Questions range from easy to hard, with the difficulty shown on each. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation.
30 of 138 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital of South Carolina?
Columbia
Columbia has been the capital since the legislature first met there in 1790; it was laid out as a planned city near the state's geographic centre to balance Lowcountry and Upstate interests.
Q 02South Carolina is named in honour of which English king, who granted the land as Carolana in 1629?
Charles I
Charles I granted the land to his attorney general Sir Robert Heath in 1629 as Carolana, from Carolus, the Latin for Charles; his son Charles II kept the name when he granted it afresh to his own supporters in 1663.
Q 03South Carolina became the eighth state in 1788 by ratifying which document?
US Constitution
The US Constitution: South Carolina's convention approved it on May 23, 1788, and New Hampshire's vote a month later, the ninth, was the one that brought it into force.
Q 04Which Civil War distinction belongs to South Carolina?
First state to vote to secede
First state to vote to secede: its convention approved the break 169 to 0 in Charleston on December 20, 1860, and six more Deep South states had followed by the time Lincoln took office in March.
Q 05Which Charleston Harbor stronghold was shelled by Confederate batteries on April 12, 1861, opening the Civil War?
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter, on an artificial island at the harbour mouth, endured a 34-hour bombardment with no combat deaths; Private Daniel Hough became the war's first fatality when a cannon misfired during the surrender salute.
Q 06Which Union officer commanded the federal garrison in Charleston Harbor that surrendered in April 1861?
Robert Anderson
Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort after a 34-hour bombardment; P. G. T. Beauregard, once his artillery student at West Point, commanded the Confederate guns.
Q 07Which drink, produced commercially on Wadmalaw Island near Charleston, is South Carolina's official hospitality beverage?
Tea
Tea was named the state hospitality beverage in 1995 because South Carolina was the first place in the country to grow it; the Wadmalaw plants descend from those early plantings.
Q 08Why did palmetto logs serve so well in the Sullivan's Island fort attacked in June 1776?
The spongy wood absorbed cannonballs
The spongy wood absorbed cannonballs instead of splintering, so Colonel William Moultrie's half-built fort beat off nine British warships on June 28, 1776, and the tree became the state's emblem.
Q 09Besides the palmetto tree, what other white symbol appears on South Carolina's blue flag?
A crescent
A crescent: Colonel William Moultrie copied the silver emblem his troops wore on their caps when he made a plain blue signal flag early in the Revolution, and the palmetto was added in 1861.
Q 10Which South Carolina hero of the Revolutionary War earned the nickname 'the Gamecock' for his fierce fighting?
Thomas Sumter
Thomas Sumter's raids on British outposts after Charleston fell in 1780 gave beleaguered patriots new heart and earned him the name; he outlived every other general of the war, dying at 97.
Q 11Which American general beat Tarleton at Cowpens in 1781 with a textbook double envelopment?
Daniel Morgan
Daniel Morgan had his militia fire two volleys and fall back, then closed Continentals and cavalry around Tarleton's pursuing men on January 17, 1781, capturing most of the British force.
Q 12What is the highest point in South Carolina?
Sassafras Mountain
Sassafras Mountain, about 3,560 feet high on the North Carolina line, is granite that was squeezed into banded gneiss when colliding continents pushed up the Appalachians.
Q 13How many counties does South Carolina have?
46
South Carolina has 46 counties, a number unchanged since 1919, when Allendale became the last county created.
Q 21Which Army post near the state capital is the US Army's largest basic combat training installation?
Fort Jackson
Fort Jackson was built in 1917 for the First World War and shut down in 1922, then revived for the Second; it now trains roughly half of all soldiers entering the Army each year.
Q 22Congaree National Park protects the largest remaining tract of what kind of forest in the United States?
Old-growth bottomland hardwood
Old-growth bottomland hardwood forest survives at Congaree because local campaigners fought for it when the owners resumed logging around 1970; Congress protected the tract in 1976 and made it a national park in 2003.
Q 23Which insects draw so many spring visitors to Congaree National Park that viewing nights are rationed by lottery?
Q 14What is South Carolina's official state bird?
Carolina wren
The Carolina wren took the title in 1948, when the legislature repealed its own 1939 choice of the mockingbird in favour of a year-round resident with Carolina in its name.
Q 15What is South Carolina's official state dance?
The shag
The shag, not the Charleston, has been the state dance since 1984: by its pioneers' account, white jitterbug dancers on the coast slowed their steps in the 1940s to the rhythm and blues played in Black clubs.
Q 16What is South Carolina's official state snack?
Boiled peanuts
Boiled peanuts became the state snack in 2006; the habit began in the 1800s as a way to use up surplus peanuts after the harvest, simmered in salted water and shared at late-summer gatherings.
Q 17What is Charleston's best-known nickname?
The Holy City
The Holy City is usually explained by the church steeples that crowd the low skyline and by the colony's early religious tolerance, though the nickname's origin is debated and it may date only from the 20th century.
Q 18Which feat did the H. L. Hunley achieve before any other vessel, in 1864?
Sink an enemy warship as a submarine
The Hunley was the first to sink an enemy warship as a submarine, sending the USS Housatonic down off Charleston, then vanished with all eight crew; the wreck was found in 1995 and raised in 2000.
Q 19What drove the H. L. Hunley through the water?
A hand-cranked propeller
A hand-cranked propeller: seven men sat in the cramped midsection turning a single crank while the captain steered from the bow, driving the boat at about four knots at best.
Q 20Which two rivers meet at the state capital to form the Congaree?
The Broad and the Saluda
The Broad and the Saluda meet over rapids that blocked river boats, so the state dug a canal around them, finished in 1824, which was later turned to generating power.
Synchronous fireflies
Synchronous fireflies flash in unison for about two weeks between mid-May and mid-June as they search for mates; only three firefly species in North America do it.
Q 24Which attraction south of Murrells Inlet did sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington and her husband create in the early 1930s?
Brookgreen Gardens
Brookgreen Gardens was laid out by the Huntingtons on four former plantations to show her sculpture outdoors; hundreds of American figurative works now stand on a 9,100-acre property that doubles as a wildlife preserve.
Q 25Which resort island hosts the PGA Tour's Heritage tournament at Harbour Town?
Hilton Head Island
Hilton Head Island had no bridge to the mainland until 1956; Charles Fraser's Sea Pines resort then set the pattern for its growth, and the Heritage has been played there since 1969.
Q 26Which coastal plant do Gullah artisans around Mount Pleasant coil into the Lowcountry's best-known baskets?
Sweetgrass
Sweetgrass is coiled and stitched with strips of palm leaf in a technique carried from West Africa, where the same wide trays were used to toss threshed grain and winnow away the husks.
Q 27What is Gullah, apart from the name of a people?
A creole language
A creole language: long dismissed as broken English, Gullah was shown by the linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner in the 1940s to carry words, names and grammar from West African languages.
Q 28Which German carmaker's plant near Spartanburg was its highest-volume factory worldwide in 2025?
BMW
BMW began at Greer in 1994 with 318i sedans and soon added Z3 roadsters; the plant now builds X-series SUVs, and about half of its 2025 output went abroad, making BMW the top US car exporter by value.
Q 29Which soul singer was born near Barnwell, South Carolina, in 1933 and grew up in Augusta?
James Brown
James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, was sent at about five to live with aunts in Augusta, in a house of gambling and bootlegging, and first sang in public at local talent nights.
Q 30Which late-night host grew up on James Island outside Charleston, the youngest of eleven children?
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert's father and two brothers died in the 1974 crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 near Charlotte when he was ten.