Underage Combatants in Blue and Gray

Unlike numerous works that claim to offer new evidence that will "rewrite the history books", this ground-breaking, innovative, and thoughtful book quite literally does exactly that for the Civil War.

In what is the first full length study of the role of underaged soldier in the Civil War, Professors Clarke (Sydney) and Plant (U.C. San Diego) advance "the basic argument that underaged youths constituted at least 10 percent of Union army enlistees" (p. 5). The means some 200,000 young men and boys served, far more than the long accepted 1.6 percent, some 3,000 or so.

Given the complexity of the subject matter, this is not an easy book to categorize. Of course it's military history, dealing with the ways in which these very young men and boys served, with numerous short profiles. It is, however, also social history, exploring the nature of parental rights in nineteenth century America, the intersection between those rights and military authority, and contemporary attitudes about youth. But there's more, for this is also cultural history, as the authors show us how society coped with – even embraced, celebrated, and memorialized – the service of "boy soldiers".

Not an easy read, nevertheless, Of Age is an essential one for any serious scholar of the Civil War or the history of military service in the United States.

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Note: Of Age is also available in e-editions.

StrategyPage reviews are published in cooperation with The New York Military Affairs Symposium

www.nymas.org