A View of the Western Union Soldier

I wanted to post one of my favorite Civil War pictures, a shot of the 44th IN.

Go ahead and click on the picture to see a larger view, or better yet, go see an even larger view at the National Archives flickr page.  One of the many cool things about this picture is the headgear of these Western troopers.  Notice the complete lack of kepi style hats, but rather a mix of full-brimmed Hardee hats and regular civilian style hats.  That is the style that we are trying to capture with our new set of Union Infantry.  We wanted to give you a few more options with your union army that wasn't just kepis and fully adorned Hardees.  The truth is that many western federal troops took their issued Hardee hat and folded it, telescoped it, smashed it on one side, creased it, cocked it to one angle, or whatever else they could to make it as individualized as possible.  Take a look at this awesome original photo.

One bonus of making our figures this way... they'll make excellent Rebs in reverse color plastic!!