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Throughout the American Civil War, approximately 250,000–420,000 males under the age of 18 were involved in both Union and Confederate forces.[1] It is estimated that 100,000 Union soldiers were 15 years of age or younger.[2] By one estimate, approximately ten percent of Union soldiers were underaged (it is likely the Confederate army had a similar proportion of underage soldiers).[3]

Reasons for joining

When the surrender of Fort Sumter was announced, boys and men of all ages (7-17) on both sides of the conflict were permitted to enlist. Abraham Lincoln initially called for 90-day enlistments.[4] However, after the Union army was driven out of Richmond in the Peninsula campaign, and after the Confederate Army began to march to Washington, Lincoln issued a call for 300,000 three-year volunteers.[5]

Boys had many of the same motives for joining the military as their adult counterparts did. In the North, boys felt a desire to defend the North and the union. [1] Southern boys wanted to repel the North, whom they viewed as hostile invaders.[1]

A key difference between boys and adults was their attitude towards slavery: in general, boys on both sides had neutral feelings towards slavery.[1] Thus, few were motivated to fight for or against it.[1]

The most popular reason boys joined the military was to escape farm work or an abusive family life.[6] (In 1860 the population of the United States was mostly rural.[7])

Methods of enlistment

Although the official minimum enlistment age was 18, there were various ways boys got around this.

First, a boy's appearance often fooled recruiters. It was common for teenagers to appear much older than they were. This was made easier during the chaos that often occurred at recruiting stations when new units were hastily formed.[1]

Secondly, it was easy to lie about one's age, especially given the fact that modern methods of identification (social security, driver's license, computer databases) did not exist at that time.[1] Furthermore, recruiters were anxious to fill recruitment quotas. So, even though they were required to certify on the enlistment papers that they judged the volunteer to be of lawful age,[5] they often turned a blind eye to an underage recruit.[1] Such recruitment passivity increased as the manpower on both sides dwindled and both sides were desperate for more help.[6] One trick was to have an underage recruit write "18" on his shoes and truthfully reply to the recruiter "I am over 18."[citation needed]

Third, some underage boys were able to enlist with the endorsement of an adult.[1] Ned Hutter, sixteen years old, joined the Confederate Army in Mississippi. His father vouched for Ned's work ethic and shooting ability. The recruiter then accepted Ned into the unit.[1]

Despite such workarounds, many other boys joined the military legitimately by signing up for non-combat positions.[1] Many such youths signed up as musicians (such as drummers, buglers, flautists).[1] There were places for 40,000 such positions in the Union Armies.[8] They often performed other tasks, such as carrying canteens, bandages, and stretchers, to assist surgeons and nurses with the wounded; relaying orders on the battlefield; few participated in the fighting.[6]

Conditions

Food

Perhaps the biggest complaint of underage soldiers during the Civil War was the lack of food.[1] Feeding an army relied on many factors, including gathering, loading, and transporting food.[1] If any of these processes were delayed, or if any miscommunications would occur, it could be days or weeks before the army was fed.[1]

Hardtack was a staple food item, to the boys’ chagrin: "After we had been in the field a year or two the call, ‘Fall in for your hard-tack!’ was leisurely responded to by only about a dozen men.... Hard-tack was very hard. This attributed to its great age, for there was a common belief among the boys that our hard-tack had been baked long before the beginning of the Christian era. This opinion was based upon the fact that the letters 'B.C.' was stamped on many, if not, indeed, all the cracker-boxes."[6]

Other staples included pork, coffee, and bread.[6]

Starving boys often devised intricate ways to sneak out of their camps and forage for food. They found food by either gathering it from the local land, or stealing it from local farmers.[1] In the Union Army, some soldiers initially objected to this practice as violating the Ten Commandments. But as the war wore on, it became evident that “such tender regard for Rebel property” strengthened the enemy and weakened the Union cause.[5] Consequently, “conscientious scruples stepped to the rear, and the soldier who had them at the end of the war was a curiosity indeed.”[5] Commanding officers forbade foraging, but often connived it and shared in the spoils.[5]

Clothing

Clothing was a crude procedure for both armies, especially towards the beginning of the war.[1] Once colors and patterns were agreed upon, uniforms were more easily standardized.[1] However, boys often found themselves in uniforms that were too big.[1] Additionally, many boys continued to grow after being assigned a uniform, and many outgrew their uniforms.[1]

Some units did not have the resources to provide uniforms to boys, so many had to wear their own clothes from home.[1]

As a result, many boys often resorted to stealing uniforms from deceased soldiers, or bartering food and supplies in order to have their clothes tailored by locals.[1]

Marching

Excitement over enlistment swiftly gave way to the boring routines of camp life and marches.

"Day after day and night after night did we tramp along the rough and dusty roads ‘neath the most broiling sun with which the month of August ever afflicted a soldier; thro’ rivers and their rocky valleys, over mountains—on, on, scarcely stopping to gather the green corn from the fields to serve us for rations.... During these marches the men are sometimes unrecognizable on account of the thick coverings of dust which settle upon their hair, eye-brows and beard, filling likewise the mouth, nose, eyes, and ears."[6]

Death, injury, and capture

Main articles: Medicine in the American Civil War and American Civil War prison camps

These children were not spared from the horrors of war that their adult counterparts faced, including violent deaths, injuries, poor medical treatment, and appalling living conditions when captured.[1]

Young soldiers’ romantic illusions about military glory evaporated under the harsh realities of combat. They suffered hunger, fatigue, and discomfort, and gradually lost their innocence in combat. Every aspect of soldiering comes alive in their letters and diaries: the stench of spoiled meat, the deafening sound of cannons, the sight of maimed bodies, and the randomness and anonymity of death.[6]

The accounts of young Union prisoners at Confederate prison camps are especially harrowing. Sixteen-year-old Michael Dougherty was shocked by the sight of “different instruments of torture: stocks, thumb screws, barbed iron collars, shackles, ball and chain. Our prison keepers seemed to handle them with familiarity.” William Smith, a fifteen-year-old soldier in the 14th Illinois Infantry, was shaken by the physical appearance of prisoners at Andersonville in Georgia, a “great mass of gaunt, unnatural-looking beings, soot-begrimes, and clad in filthy trousers."[6]

Michael Dougherty was the only member of his company to survive imprisonment at Andersonville Prison in Georgia.[6]

"No one, except he was there in the prison can form anything like a correct idea of our appearance about this time. We had been in prison for nearly five months and our clothing was worn out. A number were entire naked; some would have a ragged shirt and no pants; some had pants and no shirt; another would have shoes and a cap and nothing else. Their flesh was wasted away, leaving the chaffy, weather beaten skin drawn tight over the bones, the hip bones and shoulders standing out. Their faces and exposed parts of their bodies were covered with smoky black soot, from the dense smoke of pitch pine we had hovered over, and our long matted hair was stiff and black with the same substance, which water would have no effect on, and soap was not to be had. I would not attempt to describe the sick and dying, who could now be seen on every side."[6]

Offenses and punishments

Boys also committed the same offenses as their adult counterparts, and their commanding officers did not spare them from punishment.[5]

Offenses included:

Punishments included:

Notable examples

This article may contain excessive or irrelevant examples. Please help improve the article by adding descriptive text and removing less pertinent examples. (March 2023)

Elisha Stockwell, Jr.[9] joined the Union Army at age fifteen. Since this was against his father's wishes, he tricked his father by claiming that he was going to a Dutch dance. He told his sister he'd be back for dinner, but didn't return home for two years. He was in the Union Army for the entire duration of the war, participating in battles such as the Battle of Shiloh, the Siege of Vicksburg, and Sherman's March to the Sea. He survived the war and wrote a memoir of his wartime experiences. His story is cited extensively in the awarding-winning children's book, The Boys’ War.[1]

The most celebrated schoolboy performance of the war was the baptism of fire of the Virginia Military Institute Cadet Corps at the Battle of New Market. The corps was 215 strong when it reached the battle. The boys were eighteen or under (tradition has it that some were only fourteen).[8]

Washington and Lee University provided a company of sixty-four boys in the first days of the Civil War. Their average age was about seventeen, and their average weight was about 130 pounds. Of a total of sixty-five present in the two battles of Manassas, twenty-three were killed or wounded. In the forty battles in which it fought with the 4th Virginia Infantry, the company lost 100 dead or wounded, and forty-six captured, of a total strength of 150 from recruitments.[8]

Union

Confederacy

Statistics

Federal Soldiers:

Compared to the number of older men:

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Murphy, Jim (1990). The boys' war : Confederate and Union soldiers talk about the Civil War. New York: Clarion Books. ISBN 0395664128.
  2. ^ "National Park Civil War Series: Life in Civil War America". www.nps.gov. Retrieved April 18, 2022.
  3. ^ Clarke, Frances M.; Plant, Rebecca Jo (2023). Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780197601044.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-760104-4.
  4. ^ a b Freedman, Russell (1987). Lincoln : a photobiography. New York, N.Y.: Clarion Books. ISBN 0-89919-380-3.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Reed, John D. Billings; illustrated by Charles W. (1981). Hardtack and coffee, or, The unwritten story of Army life. [Alexandria, Va.]: Time-Life Bks. ISBN 0-8094-4210-8.((cite book)): CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Children and the Civil War".
  7. ^ US Census Bureau, Census History Staff. "Urban and Rural Areas – History – U.S. Census Bureau". www.census.gov. Retrieved January 8, 2019.
  8. ^ a b c d e Houhlihan, Burke Davis. Drawings by Raymond (1982). The civil war: strange & fascinating facts (1st ed.). New York, NY: Fairfax Press. ISBN 0-517-371510.
  9. ^ Abernethy, Byron R., ed. (1985). Private Elisha Stockwell, Jr., sees the Civil War. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0806119217.
  10. ^ Avery Brown
  11. ^ Newspaper, The Rock Island Argus (Rock Island, Illinois), February 2, 1905, Thu, Page 2. From Newspapers.com.
  12. ^ History of the 49th PA Vols p.23; pp/124-125
  13. ^ History of the 49th PA Vols p.23; pp.124–125
  14. ^ SUVCW Photos from the Past
  15. ^ Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York 1909
  16. ^ Engraving on side of headstone at Maplewood Cemetery, Charlottesville, Va. His brother Tip Collier is memorialized on the front of the same headstone, having died at age 33 in 1877. Tip would have been 18 in 1862 when his brother James went to war in his stead.
  17. ^ revollections of a Rebel....James Morris Morgan
  18. ^ but was not allowed to serve because of his youth; in 1863 he went to England to secure ships for blockade running.Jewish Encyclopedia Isidor Straus; for details of his brief service see Kurt Stone's "The Jews of Capital Hill.."(p.54)
  19. ^ https://civilwartalk.com/threads/colorization-and-restoration-of-a-mississippi-boy-csa.152975/page-2
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