"It might have been called the Boys' war. Authorities differ, and statistics bristle in the controversy, but this is the offering of the Photographic History of the Civil War:
More than 2,000,000 Federal soldiers were twenty-one or under (of a total of some 2,700,000). More than 1,000,000 were eighteen, 800,000 were seventeen, 200,000 were sixteen, 100,000 were fifteen and under. three hundred were thirteen or under, but most of these were fifers or drummers. They regularly enrolled and were sometimes fighters. There were twenty-five ten year olds or under.
A study of a million Federal enlistments turned up only 16,000 as old as forty-four, and only 46,000 of twenty-five or more.
Yet by other authorities, the Union armies were made up as follows: 30 per cent of men under twenty-one; 30 per cent from twenty-one to twenty-four; 30 percent from twenty five to thirty; 10 percent over thirty…"
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Amicalement
Armand
completes a Confederate river ironclad.
