Monday, October 28, 2013

Major General Abner Doubleday


This well sculpted Perry figure will most likely represent a standard union commander in my games, but the model himself is Major General Abner Doubleday. He was an able commander, but through false reports and personal dislikes saw him fall out of favour. He is probably most famous for firing the first return shot with his battery at Fort Sumter.

He fought in the battle of Second Bull Run leading a Brigade, then a division at South Mountain and was wounded leading his men at Antietam and was present though inactive at Fredricksburg and Chancellorsville. He again entered the fray with command of the I Corp at Gettysburg after Major General Reynolds was killed. His corps showed excellent fighting spirit when  of 9,500 of them  held off 16,000 confederates for 5 hours before having to retreat with several brigades suffering 35 to 50% causalities. Unfortunately for Doubleday another corps commander falsely indicted his command broke first and since Meade the commanding general didn't like Doubleday believing him to be an indecisive commander(his nickname was 48hours) choose to believe this and had him replaced. When Doubleday requested reinstatement of command from Meade for 1 Corps and was refused he decided to pack his bags and head for Washington to undertake administrative duties.

After the war he got into the railway business, law and wrote some books on his experience in the War.

Thanks for viewing!
Miniature Company- Perry Miniatures




I also won something over at Dalauppror blog here! It's a great blog full of Swedish wargaming history. Michael cleverly likes to take rule sets for other periods and use those with a Swedish background. Very nice painting and great AAR's can be found there so I highly recommend checking it out.
I won what seems to be a history of tanks in WWI and for sure I will be checking it out. Thanks Michael!