The Minutemen were not the militia themselves; they were the militia's edge. In October 1774 the Massachusetts Provincial Congress — the extra-legal body that had replaced the dissolved royal General Court — directed each town to reorganize its militia and to set aside one quarter of each company as "Minute Men," ready to muster on a minute's warning. They drilled twice a week, chose their own officers by vote, and kept their muskets and a pound of powder and ball at the door. On the morning of April 19, 1775, Captain John Parker's Lexington company turned out in answer to the alarm carried up the Boston Road by Paul Revere and William Dawes — about seventy men assembled on the Green by the meeting house when Major John Pitcairn's column came up at dawn. Parker's instruction is the line that has come down: "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here." Eight Lexington minutemen fell to the British first volley. The war Parker named began that day and ran for the next eight years.

This Regal Enterprises set is a five-piece muster of Massachusetts Minutemen in long civilian coats, hand-cast in white metal at 54mm and finished in the high-gloss traditional toy soldier style. The five figures show no two men dressed alike — long coats in green, brown, deep blue, tan, and rust red, each over the man's own waistcoat, stockings, and breeches; tricornes and one slouch hat between them; white cross-belts the one mark of common kit. This is the point of the militia in miniature: each man armed himself from the family wall, dressed himself in his Sunday best or his second-best workday coat, and took his place at the muster on the strength of nothing more than his town's vote. The set pairs naturally with W. Britain matte figures of the same period — the Colonial Militia standing loading musket and the Colonial Militia drummer — for collectors building a Lexington-and-Concord display across manufacturers, with the gloss-painted Regal figures providing the brighter heritage finish next to the W. Britain matte realism.

Set Number: EA24 / Regal Enterprises — Soldiers of the World, Early American Wars / 54mm scale / white metal / gloss finish / 5 standing figures / Hand made in New Zealand