Continental Line/1st American Regiment

After Yorktown, the Continental Army went home. By the spring of 1783 most of the regiments had been mustered out, and on December 23 of that year Washington formally surrendered his commission to Congress at Annapolis. But the new United States still had a frontier to police — the Ohio Country, the Northwest Territory, the western posts the British had agreed to vacate but were slow to leave — and Congress recognized within a year that a standing infantry force of some kind was unavoidable. In June 1784, Congress authorized the First American Regiment, the founding unit of what became the U.S. Army's continuous lineage. The 1779-87 period covered by this figure spans the last Continental Line years and the earliest years of that successor regiment, when the same men, the same blue coats with red facings, and the same Charleville muskets carried over from one army into the next.

This figure shows the soldier in the standing firing position — left foot forward, weapon shouldered, taking the shot. He wears the post-1779 Continental Line dress that carried over into the early peacetime army: blue coat with red facings, cuffs and lapels, white waistcoat, buff breeches, the tricorne worn brim-up. The Charleville musket — the standard French smoothbore that armed most of the Continental Line — is rendered in detail down to the bayonet socket and the sling. He pairs with the other Continental Line figures Breagans carries — the kneeling firing soldier, the regimental NCO, and the ensign with the regimental flag — for a complete fire-line composition with leadership and colors.

1/30 scale (60mm), matte-painted, single figure boxed. Catalog number 16020. As with the rest of the W. Britain modern range, the painting is photographic-quality detail intended to read well in dioramas and display cases.