Of Age

Frances M. Clarke is Associate Professor of History at the University of Sydney. She is the author of War Stories: Suffering and Sacrifice in the Civil War North. Rebecca Jo Plant is Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America.

• AcknowledgmentsA Note on TerminologyIntroduction Part I: Parental Rights and the Duty to Bear Arms: Congress, Courts, and the MilitaryCh. 1: Competing Obligations: Debating Underage Enlistment in the War of 1812Ch. 2: A Great Inconvenience: Prewar Legal Disputes Over Underage Enlistees Ch. 3: Underdeveloped Bodies: Calculating the Ideal Enlistment Age Part II: The Social and Cultural Origins of Underage Enlistment Ch. 4: Instructive Violence: Impressionable Minds and the Cultivation of Courage Ch. 5: Pride of the Nation: The Iconography of Child Soldiers and Drummer Boys Ch. 6: Paths to Enlistment: Work, Politics, and School Part III: Male Youth and Military Service in the Civil War EraCh. 7: Contrary to All Law: Debating Underage Service in the United StatesCh. 8: Preserving the Seed Corn: Youth Enlistment and Demographic Anxiety in the ConfederacyCh. 9: Forced into Service: Enslaved and Unfree Youths in the Confederate and Union ArmiesCh. 10: A War Fought by Boys: Reimagining Boyhood and Underage Service after the Civil WarCoda: Young Veterans in Postwar AmericaAppendix A: Counting Underage SoldiersAppendix B: Using the Early Indicators of Later Work Levels, Disease, and Death database to Determine Age of Enlistment in the Union Army, by Christopher RoudiezNotesBibliography Index

Ms. Clarke...and Ms. Plant...make important claims in this excellent account...[of] the phenomenon of mass youth enlistment during the Civil War...which is refreshingly clear of agonized caution and formulaic wokishness....While young males had done militia duty since Revolutionary times, antebellum Americans were still largely hostile to the notion of a standing army and were aggrieved to have their sons in it. Worst of all, once a boy lied his way into the service, parents found it hard to get him out again.