Abstract
The image of the boy soldier is a vivid one in the popular narrative of the American Civil War – there was Johnny Clem, the drummer boy of Chickamauga, as well as the so-called ‘boy generals’, Francis C. Barlow and George Armstrong Custer – men who were not boys at all, yet the label elicits ideals of innocence and untamed youth. Adult soldiers were wont to refer to each other as ‘boys’ seeming to underscore a surreal and disconnected playfulness about war-making. Veterans continued to call themselves boys, too, stressing a sense of camaraderie and nostalgia. The notion that children fought this bloody war, especially for Lost Cause advocates, helped to romanticize the conflict and underscore sacrificial loss and victimhood.
France M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant in their book, Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era, examine this surprisingly understudied topic, not so much to tell us about individual stories, although there are some included here, but to estimate an accurate number of how many youths actually enlisted, and the larger societal and cultural significance of their service. Challenging prior estimates that ranged widely, the authors contend that as many as 10 percent of the entire Union army were boys (under the age of 18), and likely the same number (or more) for the Confederacy.
Of Age is expansive and ambitious, with nine chapters, an introduction and epilogue, as well as two appendices that delineate the authors’ methodology and sources. Their footnotes are detailed, replete with historiographical discussions that range over a variety of subjects. The authors include examples of immigrant and Black youths, but the main focus of their study is on northern, white, native-born boys.
In exploring the broader historical context for how and why so many boys enlisted, the authors dig deep into the United States’ military and legal traditions from its colonial beginnings through the war itself; and conceptions of childhood that altered dramatically by the late nineteenth century. The demarcations between adults and children were far more fluid in the antebellum era, with men and boys interacting in spaces of labour and politics, and the definition of age markedly different than today. Still, there was a clear legal claim that fathers had over their offspring, particularly in challenging their underage sons’ military enlistment. Most of these challenges in the prewar era, though, were made to local or state authorities and courts, and not federal ones. This changed dramatically when the war came.
Overall, the authors seek to contextualize the romanticized image of the boy soldier which emerged during the war itself but had roots in prewar America, as well as Europe. In the north, they write, images of ‘martyred children re-imagined the preservation of the Union in terms of innocent white suffering’ (p. 113). They also are keenly interested in how the question of youth enlistment reflected the increasing power and centralization of the state and military. Further, they probe the ways in which ‘idealized depictions of the heroic drummer boys and young soldiers’ proliferated during the war and after, distorting the memory of their lived-experiences (p. 6). They state, too, that there was ‘a traffic in boys and youths’ due to the insatiable demands of war (p. 16). ‘In the long run’, the authors write, ‘the struggle to hold on to underage enlistees led to the federalization of habeas corpus, redefining the relationship between citizens and the government and the weakening ability of local communities to exercise authority over the United States military’ (p. 195).
Attitudes toward youth enlistment were different in the Confederacy, the authors profess, although they admit to a comparative lack of sources. Still, Clarke and Plant argue that white elite southern fathers held greater control over their sons, as they did in the wider patriarchal slave society, and thus, there was not as much debate or legal wranglings over youth enlistment. Citing President Jefferson Davis, they maintain that Confederates were more concerned than the Union with preserving their white boys, the ‘seed corn,’ for the future of their slave nation (p. 199). Notably, during its final desperate days of existence, the Confederacy moved to arm enslaved men before conceding to a formal mobilization of its male white youth. Even the stylized image of the boy soldier, the authors assert, had far less resonance in the Confederate state, ‘a nation founded by self-styled patriarchs seeking to uphold a hierarchical social order based on slavery’ (p. 6).
Of Age is extensively researched and thoughtfully written throughout. Readers will come away with a better understanding of the Civil War era and the changes this vast conflict wrought.