18. America’s Child Soldiers
The United States Civil War was the last conflict in which significant numbers of American children served as soldiers. About a fifth of all military personnel in the Civil War were under eighteen, and 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. Most US Army child soldiers were utilized as drummers, buglers, cooks’ assistants, nurses, orderlies, general gophers, or in other non-combatant positions. However, during battles, those children were often just as exposed to bullets and artillery as were the grown men on the firing line.
In the US Navy, children often served as “powder monkeys” in warships. Tasked during combat with rushing gunpowder from magazines to canons, they were just as exposed to danger during action as were all other sailors aboard ship, regardless of age. Indeed, as they scurried about toting sacks of gunpowder that could go off if they 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.
Related: Heartbreaking Photographs of Child Soldiers from WWI and WWII.