How Ladies Wore Cockades

There is a lot of documentation that women wore cockades, as well as men. But how did they wear them? On their bonnets? In their hats? On their shoulders?

The answer: All of the above!

There are many references in the newspapers, memoirs, and letters of the times talking about ladies wearing cockades, and there are even a few photographs. That's how I've learned how ladies of the 1860s wore their cockades.

Hats

A quote from Grander in Her Daughters says, Journalists covering the growing groundswell for secession in Tampa noted that blue cockades pinned in ladies' hats were "a token of resistance to abolitionist rule - an appropriate graceful little emblem that evinces the true spirit of the wearers."

Fannie Beers wrote in her memoirs of the war, Hats and bonnets of all sorts and sizes were made of straw or palmetto, and trimmed with the same. Most of them bore cockades of bright red and white (the "red, white, and red"), fashioned of strips knitted to resemble ribbons. Some used emblems denoting the State or city of the wearer, others a small Confederate battle-flag.

Ladies' hats were usually decorated with ribbons and flowers so it would have been easy to nestle a lovely cockade in the hat's decorations.