The strategic dividend of Clark's frontier campaign was paid out at the negotiating table in Paris four years later. The Illinois Regiment never numbered more than a few hundred men, and British forces still held Detroit, Niagara, and Michilimackinac through the war's end — but American possession of Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia gave Franklin, Jay, and Adams a piece of ground to point at when British negotiators tried to draw the new republic's western boundary at the Appalachian crest. The 1783 Treaty of Paris ran the line instead to the Mississippi, handing the United States the Old Northwest that would become Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 — which organized the territory and forbade slavery within it — followed four years later, and a single twelve-month sweep through the Illinois country turned out to be the leverage that nearly doubled the new country's continental footprint.

This W. Britain figure shows an Illinois Regiment soldier in the front rank of a firing line: kneeling on his right knee, musket leveled and braced across the lifted left, eye over the barrel, bayonet still fixed. The order is the regiment's regulation-style — dark blue regimental coat with the front turned back to show the buff lining and pewter buttons, white waistcoat under, white breeches and stockings on the unkneeling leg, white cross-belts supporting cartridge box and bayonet scabbard, black tricorne pulled low. He forms the front rank of the line the standing firing figure shoots over, with the kneeling at the ready figure waiting in the supporting position. Across the firing line he matches the posture of regular state troops like the Continental Line 1st American Regiment kneeling alert, trained on the same Steuben drill that standardized the Continental line from 1779.

Model: 16080 / W. Britain 1/30 (60mm) / matte finish / 1 piece set