Daniel Sickles was the most controversial general in the Union army. A Tammany Hall politician with no military training, he was acquitted in 1859 for murdering Francis Scott Key's son Philip Barton Key — the first successful temporary-insanity defense in American history. On July 2, 1863, at Gettysburg, Sickles disobeyed George Meade's orders and moved his III Corps a mile forward to the Peach Orchard, forming an exposed salient that Longstreet's attack shattered. Sickles lost his right leg to a cannonball. He kept the leg bones, donated them to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, and reportedly visited them every year on the anniversary of the amputation.

The figure shows Sickles in his Union major general's double-breasted frock coat with brass buttons, sword at his side, arms folded across his chest, dark forage cap — a defiant posture that fits the man. Pair Sickles with General George Meade, the commander whose orders he ignored at Gettysburg; with General Winfield Scott Hancock, whose II Corps had to plug the gap Sickles left in the Union line; or with Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, the Confederate commander whose July 2 assault destroyed Sickles's exposed corps and cost him his leg.

W. Britain 31173 General Daniel Sickles. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single foot figure on sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.