Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era
Description
An innovative study of underage soldiers and their previously unrecognized impact on Civil War era America.The smooth faces of boy soldiers stand out in Civil War photography, their spindly physiques contrasting with the uniformed adults they stood alongside. Yet until now, scholars have largely overlooked the masses of underaged youths who served as musicians, carried wounded from the field, ran messages, took up arms, and died in both the Union and Confederate armies. Of Age is the first comprehensive study of how Americans responded to the unauthorized enlistment of minors in this conflict and the implications that followed. Frances M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant offer military, legal, medical, social, political, and cultural perspectives as well as demographic analysis of this important aspect of the war. They find that underage enlistees comprised roughly ten percent of the Union army and likely a similar proportion of Confederate forces-but these enlistees' importance extended beyond sheer numbers. Clarke and Plant introduce common but largely unknown wartime scenarios. Boys who absconded without consent set off protracted struggles between households and the military, as parents used various arguments to recover their sons. State judges and the US federal government battled over whether to discharge boys discovered to be under age. African American youths discovered that both Union and Confederate officers ignored their evident age when using them as conscripts or military laborers. Meanwhile, nineteenth-century Americans expressed little concern over what exposure to violence might do to young minds, readily accepting their presence in battle. In fact, underage soldiers became prevalent symbols of the US war effort, shaping popular memory for decades to come. An original and sweeping work, Of Age convincingly demonstrates why underage enlistment is such an important lens for understanding the history of children and youth and the transformative effects of the US Civil War.
Product Details
Price
$34.95
Publisher
Oxford University Press, USA
Publish Date
February 10, 2023
Pages
448
Dimensions
6.5 X 9.25 X 1.38 inches | 1.78 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780197601044
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Frances M. Clarke is Associate Professor of History at the University of Sydney. She is the author of War Stories: Suffering and Sacrifice in the Civil War North. Rebecca Jo Plant is Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America.
Reviews
"By taking seriously a phenomenon that other historians have too often overlooked and underestimated, this landmark volume overturns both popular and scholarly assumptions about the 'boy soldiers' who fought in the American Civil War. Elegantly crafted and expertly researched, Of Age breaks new ground in the history of household relations, the law, popular culture, state power, labor, and the boundaries of citizenship in the nineteenth century. It is a must-read." -- W. Caleb McDaniel, author of Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America
"Of Age is not simply a major revision of our understanding of underage boys in the Civil War, although it delivers on that promise in full; it is also a profound reinterpretation of military service and of the soldiers' experience itself, one all Civil War and military historians should rush to read. Clarke and Plant have conducted extraordinarily intensive archival work to demonstrate that roughly 10 percent of the U.S. Army enrolled underage. Even more impressively, they develop a powerful analytic framework for understanding how that service should reshape our understanding of the history of childhood and the history of the Civil War Era. A triumph." -- Gregory P. Downs, author of After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War
"This remarkable, groundbreaking history takes a subject of enormous contemporary interest--the thousands of youths who serve in armed conflicts as soldiers, sex slaves, human shields, spies, and suicide bombers--and reveals with vivid detail the extent to which the Union and Confederate armies relied on the young not simply as buglers, drummers, messengers, scouts, or hospital orderlies, but as combatants. This book not only recovers juvenile soldiers' wartime experience but also shows how their participation in the conflict intensified American society's age consciousness, diminished parental authority, transformed attitudes toward the young, enhanced teenagers' autonomy, and expanded the authority of the federal government." -- Steven Mintz, author of Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood
