The current flag of Alabama was adopted by Act 383 of the Alabama Legislature on February 16, 1895:"The flag of the State of Alabama shall be a crimson cross of St. Andrew on a field of white. The bars forming the cross shall be not less than six inches broad, and must extend diagonally across the flag from side to side." – (Code 1896, §3751; Code 1907, §2058; Code 1923, §2995; Code 1940, T. 55, §5.)
According to Bell Allen Ross, the Hilliard's Legion Flag served as inspiration for John W.A. Sanford Jr.'s Alabama flag design.
The Alabama state flag displayed at Ivy Green, Helen Keller's birthplace in Tuscumbia
A saltire, also called Saint Andrew's Cross or the crux decussata, is a heraldic symbol in the form of a diagonal cross. The word comes from the Middle French sautoir, Medieval Latin saltatoria ("stirrup").
Coin of Theodosius II (425–429), showing the emperor with globus cruciger and with the same vexillum
Saint Andrew martyred on a decussate cross (miniature from an East Anglian missal, c. 1320)
Quarterly 1st & 4th: Barry of six [seven] vair and gules; 2nd & 3rd: Gules, a saltire vair (Henry Beaumont of Devon, d.1591)
Papal coat of arms for Pope Innocent VIII with the Keys of Peter saltirewise (Wernigerode Armorial, c. 1490)