The carbine this Federal cavalry trooper is loading is the Sharps New Model 1859 — a breech-loading .52 caliber weapon that gave Union cavalry a firepower advantage no other arm in the Civil War could match. A trained Sharps trooper could load and fire eight to ten rounds per minute; a Confederate infantryman with a muzzle-loading rifle managed two or three. The breech opened with a lever, the paper cartridge dropped in — no ramrod, no powder-and-ball juggling. When Federal cavalry dismounted and fought on foot — the standard tactic, with one man in four holding the horses — a hundred troopers put out fire equivalent to three hundred infantry.

The figure kneels on his left knee, right knee raised, working the Sharps' falling-block action to seat a paper cartridge. He wears the Federal cavalry uniform in full: dark blue shell jacket with yellow branch piping and corporal's chevrons on the sleeve, sky-blue trousers with yellow cavalry stripe, black forage cap with yellow band, short black riding boots. A Colt revolver rides in a flap holster on his right hip. Pair the figure with Trooper Kneeling as the second man in the dismounted pair, or with a mounted opposing figure like J.E.B. Stuart for a counter-cavalry diorama.

King & Country model CW064 (retired). 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single foot figure of Federal cavalry trooper kneeling to load Sharps carbine, on sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.