The Continental officer corps was an uneven body of men trying to professionalize themselves on the move. Most company captains and field officers were drawn from the yeoman gentry — town selectmen, country lawyers, merchants, propertied farmers — and most had bought their own uniforms, swords, and horses out of pocket on the promise of pay and half-pay-for-life that Congress had voted them in 1778 but could not always afford to deliver. Steuben's 1779 regulations specified facing colors by region — white for the Mid-Atlantic, red for New England, blue for the southern states, buff for Washington's personal guard — but enforcement depended on what each state's clothiers could find at market, and the officer who could afford gold lace and silver-gilt buttons often outshone his colonel. By Newburgh in March 1783, with the war effectively won and the army unpaid for the better part of two years, the officer corps had come near mutiny over the half-pay question; Washington defused the crisis with a single famous moment — pausing to put on his spectacles before reading a letter and saying, "I have grown gray in your service, gentlemen, and now find myself going blind" — and the assembled officers stood down. The Society of the Cincinnati they founded that May became the first hereditary fraternal order in the new republic.

This W. Britain figure shows a Continental officer standing at ease: left hand resting on the hilt of his sword at the left hip, right hand at his side, the posture of a man between commands. The uniform is the 1779 New England regulation with red facings — dark blue coat with red collar, red lapels turned back to show the buff waistcoat, red cuffs, and red turnbacks, gilt buttons in rows, an epaulette at each shoulder marking field rank, white breeches and stockings, black shoes with brass buckles, black neck-stock at the throat, and a black tricorne edged white. The hanger sword on its waist-belt is regulation officer issue; the absence of a spontoon places him as a field officer (major or above) rather than the company officers carrying half-pikes in the advancing-with-spontoon figure. He commands the line whose standing firing and standing defending figures hold the company front.

Model: 16101 / W. Britain 1/30 (60mm) / matte finish / 1 piece set