The Children of War: From 1861 to 1865

"Civil War Drummer Boys Playing Cards," 1891, by Julian Scott. Public Domain

The Civil War was by far the deadliest of all American conflicts.

In 1860, the population of the United States, whites, blacks, and “other,” was over 31 million. In the war that followed, some 620,000 soldiers, about 2 percent of the population, lost their lives in combat or more frequently, to disease. Hundreds of thousands of others returned home missing a limb, crippled, or emotionally and mentally scarred.

This unidentified young Confederate soldier wears an infantry uniform and likely served as a drummer boy. Public Domain

The histories of the war and its battles—Manassas, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, and the rest—typically record these casualties with little consideration for those connected to this hideous scroll of dead and wounded soldiers. Mothers, fathers, and siblings grieved the loss of beloved sons and brothers. Young wives weren’t only left bereft, but often faced hard times with the loss of the family’s chief provider.

Like all civil wars, this bloody conflict left its mark on all Americans, including children.

A drummer boy at Gettysburg, Penn., looks into the distance, in this 1900 depiction of a common scene during the Civil War. Public Domain

Boys on the Battlefield

The Civil War has been called the Boys’ War for good reason.

Historians estimate that at least 250,000 of the soldiers serving in the armies of the North and the South were 17 years old or younger. Some weren’t even in their teens. While adolescents of that time commonly served aboard ships as cabin boys or in the army as drummers and musicians, to have so many of them shoulder weapons and stand to arms was unusual.

Patriotism and a thirst for adventure likely led these young Billy Yanks and Johnny Rebs to put on a uniform. Once in the ranks, the romance of war was surely tempered by hours of drill on a parade ground and long marches on rutted, unpaved roads for most of them. The 16-year-old Confederate soldier John Delhaney later recorded this description of one such march:

“Day after day and night after night did we tramp along the rough and dusty roads ‘neath the most broiling sun with which the month of August ever afflicted a soldier; thro’ rivers and their rocky valleys, over mountains—on, on, scarcely stopping to gather the green corn from the fields to serve us for rations. ... During these marches the men are sometimes unrecognizable on account of the thick coverings of dust which settle upon their hair, eye-brows and beard, filling likewise the mouth, nose, eyes, and ears.”

"Civil War Drummer Boys Playing Cards," 1891, by Julian Scott. Public Domain

The horrors of combat that followed this training were sure to erase any remaining illusions about war. The September 1862 Battle of Antietam, the deadliest day in American military history, inflicted traumatic memories on 16-year-old Edward Spangler of the 130th Pennsylvania Regiment: “The sight of hundreds of prostrate men with serious wounds of every description was appalling. Many to relieve their suffering were impatient for their turn upon the amputation tables, around which were pyramids of severed legs and arms. ... Many prayed aloud, while others shrieked in the agony and throes of death.”

In 1949, James Lurvey of New Hampshire, age 101, related similar horrors he witnessed at Gettysburg as a 15-year-old drummer: “Shot and shell and the screams of dying men and boys filled the humid air. A non-com told me to put away my drum. He tied a red rag around my left arm and told me I was now in the Medical Corp. I told him I was not big enough to lift my end of a stretcher, so he assigned me to a field tent. It was stifling inside. I thought I’d keel over when they told me my assignment. Wish then I could have hefted a stretcher. I was to stand by and carry out the soldiers’ arms and legs as the doctor amputated them. I guess that was the day I grew up and left boyhood forever. And I wasn’t yet sixteen.”

A memorial to Civil War nurses is located in the Boston State Capitol building. It was dedicated in 1914 by the Mass. Daughters of Veterans. Many volunteer nurses in the Civil War cared for young, injured soldiers. Public Domain

When the War Came Home

Some civilian adolescents living in Gettysburg underwent similar horrible experiences, but because most of the fighting took place in the South, it was mostly the children of Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, and adjoining states who saw the carnage of war firsthand. They lived under siege in cities like Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Atlanta, watched Union troops plunder their family’s possessions and confiscate their livestock, and had their homes, schools, and churches turned into field hospitals.

When Union troops occupied Atlanta in 1864 and the city began to go up in flames, Carrie Berry, age 10, recorded the events in her diary: “They came burning the store house and about night it looked like the whole town was on fire. We all set up all night. If we had not set up our house would have been burnt up for the fire was very near and the soldiers were going around setting houses on fire where they were not watched. They behaved very badly.”

This 1864 photograph shows the smoldering ruins of Atlanta's first Union Station, after Sherman's March to the Sea. Public Domain

Propaganda, Playtime, and Hard Work

Away from the dangers of the battlefield, boys on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line played at being soldiers, mimicking local military drills and pretending to fight the battles they read about in the papers or heard discussed by their parents. Some made effigies of Jefferson Davis or Abraham Lincoln and used them as targets for rocks and sticks.

Reading engaged children as well as adults. In the North, children’s magazines like “The Little Pilgrim” and “Our Young Folks” printed patriotic stories, poems, songs, and other activities. Down South paper shortages prevented such publications, but textbooks like “The Dixie Primer” and “The New Southern Grammar” showcased Southern virtues.

The "Dixie Reader" was part of a series that many Southern children used to learn to read.During the Civil War, families struggled to maintain normal schedules and routines. Educating youngsters was one such challenge. Public Domain

Children on both sides generally had more chores during the war; they picked up the slack left by absent fathers and brothers. Girls helped their mothers as well by sewing and knitting articles of clothing for family members and other troops, and both girls and boys helped prepare shows, banquets, and dances to raise money for military supplies.

On farms in the North and the South, the absence of fathers and older brothers forced younger children to accept more responsibility and take on a greater workload to fill the gap. Faced with shortages of staples like food and medicines, Southern children endured greater hardships due to the need for their labor. In addition to their duties on the farm, they might be dispatched to hunt for game or gather medicinal herbs in the forests and fields.

(Top) "Six and Eighy-Six Knitting for the Soldiers" and "Children's Soldiers' Play" from "The Tribute Book: A Record of the Munificence, Self-Sacrifice and Patriotism of the American People During the War for the Union," 1865. Internet Archive. Public Domain

Living under equally harsh conditions were the slave children freed by advancing Union forces. In his online article, “Children in the Civil War,” historian James Marten pointed out that while missionaries and others from the North organized schools for formerly indentured children, they too were put to work in fields and gardens. Often living along with adults in disorganized “contraband camps,” they suffered privation, hunger, and disease. At times, the death toll in these camps for adults and children alike could rise to 30 percent in the hot, buggy, and malarial climate.

For More Information

A professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Marten is a leader in the field of Civil War social history. He’s focused much of his research on children who lived through the Civil War. His 1998 book “The Children’s Civil War” remains in print and available from the University of North Carolina Press.

Marten’s exhaustive research and his excellent writing make this book a gold mine of information and stories about the lives of children during the Civil War. Focusing his attention on the home front rather than on the boys who joined the military, he brings to life a panorama of the activities, schooling, and daily life that made up childhood in wartime. Using diaries, newspapers, letters, children’s publications, and oral histories, he recreates a slice of the past long ignored by earlier historians.

This 1864 photograph captured the destruction of Atlanta's railroads. Young men, some barely into their teens, were thrown into some of the bloodiest battles the United States has ever seen. The effects upon the young men who survived were severe and numerous.  Public Domain

To Marten belongs the honor of summarizing the lasting effects of the war on many of these children. In the Marquette article, he drew this conclusion from his long years of research:

“The Civil War shaped the adult lives of children in countless ways. For many Northern children—at least those who did not lose a father or brother—the excitement and the ultimate success of the Union created romantic, patriotic memories of a time when the nation was saved. For many Southern children, the wrenching disappointment of losing the war, combined with the economic hardships that followed, inspired a dedication to preserving the memory of the ‘glory days’ before the war and of the devotion of the brave Confederate soldiers. Finally, for Southern black children, the war provided a glimpse of a freedom for which they had yearned, but which would not be fully redeemed for almost a century.”

This 1864 photograph depicts the three children of a killed New York Volunteer. Between casualty-laden battles, rampant disease, and economic hardship back home, many children lost a parent or were orphaned during the Civil War.  Public Domain

In “The Children’s Civil War,” Marten also points readers to the impact on American history that these adolescents made after they grew up: “As the children of the Civil War grew up, they applied the political lessons of their childhoods to their adult lives, with important ramifications for the United States as it entered the twentieth century.”

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