Children of the Civil War

Although it is impossible to know the age of the Federal soldier in the picture at right, it is safe to assume that he is quite young, probably a teenager or maybe a little older. A teenager is certainly of a tender age, but was an old-timer compared to some of the soldiers who served in the Civil War.

Despite the fact that seventeen was the minimum age for enlistment in the Army during the Civil War era, many children much younger than the ripe old age of seventeen either attempted to enlist, using assumed names and ages, or tagged along behind regiments until they were old enough to enlist. It is estimated that around five percent of the soldiers who served during the Civil War were under 18 years of age.

Children as young as nine years old either served as soldiers or as drummer boys. One of the most famous was John Clem, pictured below.

John Clem was only nine years old in 1861 when he ran away from home with hopes of joining the Union Army. While he was refused admittance into the army, he took up with the 22d Michigan Regiment, who took him on as a mascot, letting him officially enlist as a drummer boy in 1863. Clem gained national fame, known to many as “Drummer Boy of Chickamauga” or “Johnny Shiloh.” Clem lived to be commissioned by then-president Ulysses S. Grant as a Second Lieutenant in 1871, retiring from the Army in 1915 with rank of Brigadier General and an even more extraordinary title – the last Civil War veteran still enlisted in the Army.

Clem’s story is a romantic one that spurred many a boy’s dreams of being a drummer boy during the Civil War. However, the reality of the lives of most boy soldiers was less bright than that of Clem’s. A drummer boy was in particular danger, often out in front of the infantry, directly in the line of fire.

For other boys who joined as soldiers rather than drummer boys, the experience was even more fraught with danger; more prone to the illness – often due to hunger, cold, or the filthy living conditions common in the camps – that decimated many of the troops on both sides, those who survived illness were often mowed down during battle. The youngest soldier wounded during the Civil War, William Black, had his left hand and arm shattered by an exploding shell at the age of twelve.

While both the Union and the Confederacy had boy soldiers in their midst, the young soldier was more common in the Confederate army, especially as the war wound down and many of the men who’d enlisted were either dead or maimed.

Regardless of what side they fought on, these children turned soldiers discovered the harsh reality of war alongside soldiers old enough to be their fathers and grandfathers. They experienced the same hardships, the same battles, even the same fate as prisoners of war – these young soldiers were not even spared prison when they were captured. They are among the bravest of those who served during the Civil War.