4. When America Had Hundreds of Thousands of Child Soldiers
Today, child soldiers are a tragic phenomenon associated mostly with domestic conflicts in the Developing World countries and failed states. However, there was a time when child soldiers did not even raise eyebrows in the US. The most extensive use of American child soldiers occurred in the country’s bloodiest dispute, the US Civil War.
It is estimated that a fifth of all military personnel in the Civil War were under eighteen. More than 100,000 soldiers in the Union Army alone were fifteen years old or less. There were even cases in which children as young as eight were put in uniform.