Need painting info- Union artillery crew

Osprey Men At Arms 177 has a colour plate of Light Artillery uniforms: the Corporal has red piping, cords, tassles and the cord and cockade on his shako is red too.

Regular Army units were marked by different piping colours. Cavalry was yellow, Infantry was white and Artillery was red. I was just reminded of that this weekend while watching John Ford's "Sergeant Rutledge". The prosecutor was an infantry officer and he was correctly wearing white whilst all the cavalrymen were wearing yellow. Someone got those details correct.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

on 8/30/2009 11:59 AM (ET) Don Stauffer wrote the following:

From

US Army Regulations 1861

1455. /All Enlisted Men of the Cavalry and Light Artillery / shall wear a uniform jacket of dark blue cloth, with one row of twelve small buttons on the breast placed at equal distances; stand-up collar to rise no higher than to permit the chin to turn freely over it, to hook in front at the bottom, and to slope the same as the coat-collar; on the collar, on each side, two blind button-holes of lace, three-eights of an inch wide, one small button on the button-hole, lower button-hole extending back four inches, upper button-hole three and a half inches; top button and front ends of collar bound with lace three-eights of an inch wide, and a strip of the same extending down the front and around the whole lower edge of the jacket; the back seam laced with the same, and on the cuff a point of the same shape as that on the coat, but formed of the lace; jacket to extend to the waist, and to be lined with white flannel; two small buttons at the under seam of the cuff, as on the coat cuff; one hook and eye at the bottom of the collar; color of lace (worsted), yellow /for Cavalry/, and scarlet /for Light Artillery /.

Many thanks to all you guys. There is enough common in the replies that I can do the detail painting now. This is my first figure painting other than pilots :-)

I had a book of civil war uniforms once. No two regiments had the same uniform. All were a mixture of blue and grey. Some Union regiments wore almost all grey and some Confederate regiments wore almost all blue! The uniforms you see in TV shows and movies were an invention of Hollywood to help viewers tell the two sides apart.

If the artillery was provided by a separate regiment it is likely they wore a different uniform from either the infantry or cavalry or possibly even no uniform at all.

HTH

(kim)