"Children of the Civil War: On the Battlefield" Topic

"While the Civil War was called "The Boy's War", the enlistment of youths into the armed forces was not a new phenomenon in nineteenth century. Generations of boys had served in minor roles in armies and aboard vessels for centuries on both sides of the Atlantic. On this subject, President Abraham Lincoln sternly wrote to the Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, "The United States don't need the service of boys who disobey their parents." Despite the age restrictions and inexperience, a number of young boys did enlist on both sides to find adventure and "take the defiant South and set them straight" or, as one Southern boy pledged, to "die rather than become a slave to the North."

When Elisha Stockwell signed his recruitment papers, he was not entirely honest: "I told the recruiting officer I didn't know just how old I was but thought I was eighteen. He didn't measure my height, but called me five feet five inches high. I wasn't that tall two years later when I re-enlisted." For most of the war, the minimum enlistment age in the North was legally held at 18 for soldiers and 16 for musicians, although younger men could enlist at the permission of their parents until 1862. In the South, the age limit for soldiers stayed at 18 until 1864 when it was legally dropped to 17…."
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Armand

My Great Great Grandfather on my mothers side was a drummer boy with Sherman on his March through Georgia, until Sherman discovered he was only 13 years old. Sherman then discharged him and sent him home.

He never forgave Sherman for that as he was just 2 weeks shy of qualifying for a pension because of his lenght of service(he enlisted when he was 11).

Thanks!.

Armand

It really wasn't a "Boy's War" even though certainly a lot of boys did serve. The average age of the Union soldiers was 27 in 1861 and it went down one year for each year of the war. So in order to get that as an average age with all those boys in the army, there also had to be plenty of 30 and 40 year old soldiers to balance it out.

True….

Armand