146th New York

Over the years I have built four American Civil War armies.

• In the early to mid-1970s I had a large Airfix 1/72nd collection
• In the late-1970s to early 1980s I had a huge 15mm collection.
• In the early 1990s I built up a very small 25mm Dixon collection
• In the early 2000s I built up a large 28mm collection, to which I have been adding recently 

In all but the most recent collection I deliberately avoided specialist units such as the Iron Brigade, the Stonewall Brigade, Hood’s Texans or zouaves for that matter. Then when I saw that the Battle in a Box set that I bought a couple of months contained 24 zouave figures, the die was cast that I had to do a couple of units.

The first unit, the 5th New York was posted a week ago (link), but the unit presented here, the 146th New York, is perhaps my favourite American Civil War zouave unit because its uniform is modeled on that of the Tirallieurs Algériens, my favourite unit from the French Second Empire. Strangely the history of this regiment was deeply intertwined with the 5th New York to such an extent that the two regiments could never appear in the same order of battle.

Mustered in October 1862, the regiment was alternatively known as the 5th Oneida Regiment or the Halleck Infantry. It did not enter service in a zouave uniform and in the standard New York State uniform served at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. After the latter battle the remnants of the 5th New York were merged with the 146th and the regiment adopted a zouave uniform in June 1863. The regiment went on to fight at Gettysburg, where as a part of Weed’s Brigade it helped defend Little Round Top.

Further honours followed at Williamsport, the Wilderness (where they were all but decimated in Saunders Field), Spotsylvania, North Anna, Totopotomy Creek, Cold Harbour, Petersburg, Weldon Railroad, White Oak Ridge, Hatcher's Run and Appomattox.

The regiment was mustered out of service on 16 July 1865.