Children of the Civil War
The US Civil War was the last conflict in which significant numbers of American children were utilized as soldiers. About a fifth of all military personnel in the conflict were under eighteen, and that 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. For the most part, US Army child soldiers were utilized as drummers, buglers, cooks’ assistants, nurses, orderlies, general gophers, or employed in other non-combatant positions. However, as battles raged, Civil War child soldiers were frequently just as exposed to bullets and artillery as were the grown men on the firing line.
Things were hairy for kids at sea as well. In the US Navy, children frequently served as “powder monkeys” in warships. Tasked in combat with rushing gunpowder from magazines to canons, they were just as exposed to danger as were all other sailors aboard ship, regardless of age. Indeed, since they scurried about with sacks of gunpowder liable to go off if it came into contact with any spark or shard of flaming timber or scorching shell fragment, the little powder monkeys might have been at greater risk than the rest of the crew.