When we chat about the way the young men are today in the world and how they are going off to fight in the wars of today.
Here are some facts that might interest ya'll
For example:
Of a total of some 2,700,000More than 2,000,000 Federal soldiers were twenty-one or under
Some 1,000,000 were eighteen or under.
Roughly 800,000 were seventeen or under.
About 200,000 were sixteen or under.
About 100,000 were fifteen or under.
Most of these fifers or drummerssome 300 were thirteen and under they were still regulars sometimes fought as well
Amazingly according to records about 25 were about ten and under
This doesn't even account for the youngsters that were caught up in the fray as civilians!
These are Federal numbers.
The Southern boys records are much more sketchy!
One sample of 11,000 men produced about 8,000, the great majority, between eighteen and twenty-nine.
There was one thirteen, and three were fourteen; 31 were fifteen; 200 were sixteen; 366 were seventeen; and about a thousand were eighteen.
Almost 1,800 were in their thirties, about 400 in their forties, and 86 in their fifties. One man was seventy, and another, seventy-three.
Their are tales of buglers too small to climb into saddles unaided, who rode into pistol-and-saber battles with their regiments.
Most famous of these on the Union side was Johnny Clem
who became drummer to the 22ndMichigan at eleven, and was soon a mounted orderly on the staff of General George H. Thomas, with the "rank" of lance sergeant.
The identity of the war's youngest soldier is unknown , but on the Confederate side, in particular, there was many claimants.
Here is a sampling of boys in the war:
George S. Lamkin of Winona, Mississippi, joined Stanford's Mississippi Battery when he was eleven, and before his twelfth birthday was severely wounded at Shiloh.
T.D. Claiborne, who left Virginia Military Institute at thirteen, in 1861 reportedly became captain of the 18th Virginia that year, and was killed in 1864, at seventeen.
E.G. Baxter, of Clark County, Kentucky, is recorded as enlisting in Company A, 7th Kentucky Cavalry in June, 1862,when he was not quite thirteen (birth date: September 10, 1849), and a year later was a second lieutenant.
John Bailey Tyler, of D Troop, 1st Maryland Cavalry, born in Frederick, Maryland, in 1849, was twelve when war came. He fought with his regiment until the end, without a wound.
T.G. Bean, of Pickensville, Alabama, was probably the wars most youthful recruiter. He organized two companies at the University of Alabama in 1861, when he was thirteen, though he did not get into service until two years later, when he served as adjutant of the cadet corps taken into the Confederate armies.
M.W. Jewett, of Ivanhoe, Virginia, is said to have been a private in the 59th Virginia at thirteen, serving at Charleston, South Carolina, in Florida, and at the siege of Petersburg.
W.D. Peak, of Oliver Springs, Tennessee, was fourteen when he joined Company A, 26th Tennessee, and Matthew J. McDonald, of Company I, 1st Georgia Cavalry, began service at the same age.
John T. Mason of Fairfax County, Virginia, went through the first battle of Manassas as a "marker" for the files of the 17th Virginia at age fourteen, was soon trained as a midshipman in the tiny Confederate Navy, and was aboard the famed cruiserShenandoah.
One of Francis Scott Key's grandsons, Billings Steele, who lived near Annapolis, Maryland, crossed the Potomac to join the rangers of Colonel John S. Mosby, at the age of sixteen.
Source:"The Civil War, Strange and Fascinating Facts" by Burke Davis
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