The Generals and their Staff

Generals Grant and Sherman and their staff

Grant and staff at City Point, Va

It is hard to find civil war photographs of Civil War Generals and staffs mounted on their horses, though it was a popular image for paintings.

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 In scanning the archives one finds numerous photos of commanders and their staff in standing or sitting poses, but almost none showing them mounted. The difficulty of keeping a bunch of horses still for long enough to make an exposure is probably one reason.







In the scene on the McCook's Landing we are depicting a meeting between Grant and Sherman and some mounted staff officers. I also have a few more cavalry figures  I plan to add as escorts and messenger. One of the escorts will be bearing a unit designating flag.

As I described before, Grant and Sherman were not physically together during the period we model. The vignette is meant to illustrate the close relationship the two had in the final years of the war.  The purists can think of these officers as generic generals even though they do look uncannily like Grant, Sherman, Burnside (his whiskers are a give away), and Howard (though I gave Howard gray whiskers. During the war his beard was dark).

It is interesting to observe how much room on the layout these figures take up. There won't be room for a wagon and mule train on the street with all the mounted figures there.