The Confederate "butternut" color was a dye problem. The Confederacy intended its soldiers to wear regulation gray, but the South had no domestic indigo industry and the Union blockade kept European dyes out. Confederate quartermasters issued vegetable dyes — walnut hulls, copperas, butternut bark — that produced a tan-brown color rather than military gray. The shade varied from regiment to regiment depending on which dye batch reached them. By 1863 most Confederate enlisted men in the field were wearing some shade of butternut, with proper Richmond Depot gray reserved for newer issue and officers. The figure in this set wears the gray shell jacket and butternut trousers that became typical of a Confederate soldier on long campaign.

This W. Britain figure depicts a Confederate infantryman at parade rest — rifle musket held vertically across the body, left hand near the muzzle, right hand on the small of the stock, bayonet fixed. He wears the mix-and-match late-war Confederate kit: gray shell jacket, butternut trousers, the broad-brimmed slouch hat preferred by Confederate soldiers over the kepi, the cartridge box and haversack on his belt, and the bedroll lashed across his chest. The weathered face and gray beard suggest a long-service volunteer. Pair this figure with Confederate Infantry Company Officer for an officer-and-enlisted command pair; with Texas Brigade Standing Firing for a Confederate firing line; or with Lt. Gen. James Longstreet as the corps commander.

Scale: 1/30 (60mm). Matte-painted metal. W. Britain model 31502. From the American Civil War range. Single foot figure, supplied painted and ready for display.