"Cockades?" Topic

You rarely see cockades in dioramas or on ACW figures in general, so were they carried into action at all? Were they simply decorations on parades early in the war and then thrown away? I guess they're too small to paint in the smaller scales, maybe some flagmaker could make small cockades to put on troops.

I think they were more a political than military thing. I have seen no photos of troops wearing them after the prewar or early war period.

They were typically political or patriotic decorations. I have never run across them after really early in the war. Unless you want to count the deer the bucktails wore on their hats!

I think the point of a cockade is so you can tell the sides apart when they're not wearing uniforms. If everybody is in uniform, a cockade is just another doo-dad on your hat.

Bucktails on some of the Pennsylvainia regiments

Occasional ostrich plume on a Hardee hat.

Some boxwood on the Irish Brigade forage caps at Fredericksburg

So not even at 1st Bull Run then? Thanks for the quick replies.

Honestly Swede, I doubt cockades survived the camps of instruction.