The Texas Brigade left Texas in 1861 carrying whatever weapons their volunteers could bring from home — shotguns, hunting rifles, and old smoothbore flintlocks that had come through the Texas Revolution twenty-five years earlier. The Confederate government re-equipped them as quickly as it could. By mid-1862 most of the brigade carried imported Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle-muskets, the .577 caliber rifled weapon that gave Confederate infantry the same effective range as Federal Springfields. The 1st Texas Infantry kept its smoothbore muskets longer — through 1864 — because the smoothbore could fire a "buck and ball" load (one large bullet and three buckshot), devastating at close range in the kind of brush-and-cornfield combat the regiment kept finding itself in.

This W. Britain figure depicts a Texas Brigade infantryman in regulation Confederate butternut and gray, standing firing in the two-rank line: dark forage cap, gray shell jacket, light gray-brown trousers, the rolled shawl across his chest, the cartridge box on his belt, and the bayonet fixed. The rifle is leveled in the standing-fire stance. The campaign beard and worn uniform suggest a Texan who had been in the field for over a year by the time of the pose — likely Gettysburg or later. This figure pairs naturally with the brigade's other Standing Firing figure for a two-figure firing-line diorama. Pair this figure with 1st Texas Flagbearer (First Pattern Bunting), the same brigade's colors at the Antietam Cornfield; with Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, the corps commander under whom the Texas Brigade served from the Seven Days through Appomattox; or with Col. William C. Oates of the 15th Alabama, whose regiment fought alongside the Texas Brigade at Little Round Top.

Scale: 1/30 (60mm). Matte-painted metal. W. Britain model 31237. From the American Civil War range. Single foot figure, supplied painted and ready for display.