The White Cockade

Though several nations have used white cockades in history, the white cockade is almost always associated with Scotland. And there's a great story behind it!

The story happens in Scotland in 1745. Let's set the stage because it's just a little complicated.

We start with a king - James II and VII. Yep, complicated right at the get-go. The two numbers reflect the fact that he was James II of England and Ireland, and James VII of Scotland. All we care about for the purposes of this blog post is that James Stuart, king of Scotland, was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. And the Scots never got over it. Thereby hangs the rest of this tail.

William of Orange came to the throne in James's place and reigned with his wife Mary. (If you've heard of William and Mary College in Virginia, this is who it's named after.) William was Protestant, whereas the Stuarts were Catholic. The Brits were concerned not only about the James's Catholic leanings but also his ties with Catholic France (Britain's historic enemy). So after William's ascension, they ruled that only Protestants could hold the throne.

Now if you know anything about Europe's kings and queens, you know they are all related! Mary (wife of William) and her sister Anne, were both Stuarts - daughters of King James (the II and the VII). So when William and Mary died, Anne became queen, placing a Stuart on the throne once again. She was, in fact, the first official monarch of the united Great Britain.

She was destined to be the last Stuart on the British throne.

At her death, the law ruled out about fifty Catholic contenders for the throne, instead placing Protestant and foreigner German King George on the throne.

The Scots had finally had it with interlopers.

So they decided to try to put a Stuart back on the throne. This movement became known as the Jacobite movement, based on the Latin form of James's name.

In order not to turn this blog into a historical treatise, let's skip ahead to where we started: 1745.

Bonnie Prince Charlie was the last Stuart to attempt to regain the British throne for his family. If "Charlie" sounds a little informal for a prince, you can always use his full name: Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart. As for me, I'll stick to Charlie. This is a picture of him... and please check out that lovely white cockade in his hat. (You knew cockades had something to do with this, right?)

The story goes that when Prince Charlie landed in Scotland, he picked a white rose to wear as a badge in his hat and thereafter his followers wore white cockades as their emblem. Robert Burns even wrote a song about The White Cockade of Charlie's followers.

In my research, I've come across some beautiful paintings of maidens sewing white cockades on their lovers' Scotch bonnets, or proudly admiring their laddies' emblems of defiance. Like this one.

Of course, women as well as men could know fear of British reprisals for their patriotism as this tension-laden picture shows. These ladies are sewing white cockades in secret, anxiously watching the window... perhaps afraid of a British sympathizer discovering them?

Well, in spite of the support of both the ladies and the laddies, poor Charlie was eventually defeated at the Battle of Culloden and many of his followers had to flee the wrath of the British. Wonder where they ended up? You guessed it. In the good ole USA.

When war broke out between the American colonies and Great Britain in 1775, many Scottish-born colonists simply continued the resistance they'd felt all along to the Hanoverian Kings George. In fact, tradition says that as the colonists marched to Concord bridge, where the first battle of the Revolutionary War was fought, the band played "The White Cockade."

A favorite phrase of the American colonists was "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." So it was only natural that the cockade which stood for resistance to tyrants in Scotland should still be favored as an emblem of patriotic resistance in America.

So if you love freedom, if you resist tyrants, if you have a little Scottish ancestry... wear a white cockade!

Oh, by the way... did you know that when American gained her independence in 1783, she very nearly asked Prince Charlie to reign as king of the new nation? Yep, it's true. They didn't actually do it... but they came close. History is fun, isn't it?

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History of the Blue Cockade - Part 2

The blue cockade was a widespread emblem of states' rights during both the Nullification Crisis of 1832 and the Secession Crisis of 1860. Why was the blue cockade chosen for such a political statement?

Let's head over to London in 1778 to find out.

As we Americans know from our textbooks, Britain was involved in a war with her American colonies at this point. What we often forget is that Britain was also involved in warfare with the French, the Spanish and the Dutch at the same time. Basically, the British army was stretched pretty thin.

Furthermore, things weren't very pretty on the home front either. British citizens were facing a poor economy, due in part to the country's resources being spent on her many wars. Unpopular wars, I might add - many British subjects actually sympathized with the American colonies. Also, lots of people were ticked off at the lack of proper representation in Parliament (remember the American colonists' rallying cry of "No taxation without representation"?). And THEN the government pulled the final punch - they passed the Papist Act of 1778.

Uh, the what?

OK, let's back up a little. One of the chief causes of the embroglios in Europe for centuries was religion - specifically, the Protestant Religion vs the Catholic Religion. It wasn't so much the religious dogmas as it was the issue of power. Which church hierarchy would have the power of being the national religion? England had for years been Protestant, fighting against the power of the Pope in, for example, Spain and France. There had been British anti-Catholic laws on the books for some time although they weren't highly enforced since, um, many of the British troops came from largely Catholic areas like Scotland and Ireland.

But the British government was running low on men and the anti-Catholic laws (such as the one requiring a religious oath to join the army) were a deterrent for some men who would have otherwise joined up. So the pragmatic thing to do was to loosen the anti-Catholic laws, right?

Apparently not.

Protestants feared the loosening of anti-Catholic regulations by the Papist Act would bring back Catholic power. Catholics feared that the loosening of the laws would spark a rash of anti-Catholic feeling. Basically, nobody was happy with the Papist Act.

So you've got a government stretched thin by unpopular wars, high tax rates on unrepresented people, and an unpopular governmental deregulation of Catholics: A perfect recipe for a jolly good riot.

Which is exactly what happened in 1780.

Lord George Gordon, the first president of the Protestant Association in 1779, led the party against the Papist Act. By 1780, Lord Gordon had a petition ready for Parliament to consider and a backing of thousands of people who marched on the Houses of Parliament. The badge of this organization?

You guessed it: A blue cockade.

Here's a picture of Lord Gordon haranguing the crowd. Note the blue ribbon in his hat, as well as the hats of the spectators.

So we go forward in history about fifty years, and find a similar situation. An English-speaking people, the United States, is dealing with an unresponsive government, high taxation, and bills run up by an unpopular war (the War of 1812). Naturally, the blue cockade came to mind and was used as the symbol of a people pushing back against a tyrannical government.

And that's where the American blue cockade had its roots. Cool, huh? Here's a Virginia Secession Cockade, from the Special Collections Research Center, Earl Gregg Swem Library at the College of William and Mary. Pretty, isn't it?

Of course, you're wondering what happened to Lord Gordon and his blue cockaders, right?

Gordon's petition to Parliament was defeated 192 to 6. The people of London revolted and a riot broke out. Prisons were broken into and in some cases destroyed, the Bank of England was attacked and the properties of many Catholics and Catholic churches destroyed. It wasn't till the army was called out and about 500 people shot or wounded that the riot was finally quelled. Gordon was later tried for treason and acquitted.

Charles Dickens' 1841 novel Barnaby Rudge is based on the Gordon Riots, if you're interested in reading some historical fiction on the subject. Though not completely accurate, it is an interesting look at the times. For a more in-depth, hour-by-hour detailing of the Gordon Riots, check out this article.

And the blue cockade? Well, it was decidedly frowned upon in London... at least for the time. A quote from the era states,

"It is earnestly requested of all peaceable and well-disposed persons, (as well Protestants associated as others) that they will abstain from wearing blue cockades; as these ensigns are now assumed by a set of miscreants, whose purpose is to burn this city, and plunder its inhabitants; ..."

Eighty years later, the Baton Rouge, LA Daily Advocate, on October 22, 1860 observed:

"South Carolina is Arming.—We are glad to see the people of our State everywhere preparing for the crisis which is at hand. As an offset to the "Wide-Awakes" of the North, "Minute Men" are organizing in all the principal districts of South Carolina. Their object is to form an armed body of men, and to join in with our fellow citizens, now forming in this and our sister States as "Minute Men," whose duty is to arm, equip and drill, and be ready for any emergency that may arise in the present perilous position of the Southern States.

"In Kershaw, Abbeville and Richland Districts the organization is already complete and powerful, embracing the flower of the youth, and led on by the most influential citizens. The badge adopted is a blue rosette, two and a half inches in diameter, with a military button in the centre, to be worn upon the side of the hat. Let the important work go bravely on, and let every son of Carolina prepare to mount the blue cockade."

History of the Blue Cockade - Part 1

If you know anything about American Civil War cockades, then you probably know that blue was a favorite cockade color during the 1860 Secession Crisis. But why? What was the symbolism behind the blue cockade?

To find that out, let's head back 28 years to the Nullification Crisis of 1832.

The Abominations
There was a great deal of conflict over tariffs in our nation's history. Without an income tax (the income tax wasn't initiated until 1862 under President Lincoln), much of the government's money came from tariffs. And the South began to take issue with the way tariffs were being handled. You see, since the South had less manufacturing than the North (being mostly agrarian), they imported much more of their goods than did the North. Hence, they paid more in tariffs. But that wasn't all of the problem. The South also felt that government money was being unfairly apportioned in the nation because more was spent for internal "improvements" in the North (such as roads and canals) than in the South.

In other words, the South was paying higher taxes for less benefits. Southerners, in a word, were not happy campers.

Abominations Nullified
Thus it happened that when a particularly onerous tariff law was passed in 1828, called the "Tariff of Abominations," Southerners protested. With the election of Andrew Jackson as president, they hoped to see a reduction in the tariffs but the new compromise tariff law passed in 1832 didn't satisfy many of them. South Carolinians finally had it with waiting on politicians to get it right (sound familiar?) and passed the Ordinance of Nullification against the tariff, declaring it unconstitutional.

Well, the Federal government wasn't going to take this lying down and military forces were mobilized to enforce the tariff. To make things even more exciting, Vice President John C. Calhoun was in favor of South Carolina's Nullification Ordinance, against President Jackson. In fact, Calhoun stepped down as VP in order to run for the senate where he could more adequately defend nullification. Eventually a compromise tariff was negotiated in February 1833 and South Carolina repealed her Ordinance of Nullification.

The Badge of the Nullifiers
And what, ladies and gentlemen, was the emblem of this crusade for states' rights and fair tax laws? You guessed it - a blue cockade! Blackwood’s Edinburg Magazine in 1866 stated of the Nullification Crisis that, "Every man wore a blue cockade, with a palmetto button in the centre, as the emblem of South Carolina, the Palmetto State. Every lady wore the same favour in her bonnet or on her bosom."

Congressman Isaacs of Tennessee is quoted as stating sarcastically, "We learn, also, that they have mounted the blue cockade. I wonder how it came to be blue. I have heard of blue laws and blue lights, of the blue bells of Scotland, and the bonnets of blue; but I never before heard of blue cockades! But, without respect to color, it is a badge of hostility – an emblem of war."

Note this lovely woodcut of a lady (obviously southern by her surroundings) patriotically sewing a blue cockade on a cap.

Of course, all of this brings up an interesting question: Why did the Nullifiers choose a blue cockade for their emblem?

Good question - and I answer it in PART TWO!