The "Boys As Young As 8 Years Old Went To War In 1861" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading a newspaper column which is written by one of my favorite communists, Jack Brubaker, aka The Scribbler!  His column today was titled "Boys as young as 8 years old went to war in 1861.  He went on to explain...Fred Dent Grant, son of President Ulysses S. Grant, left George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry just before Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians nearly annihilated the regiment at theBattle of the Little Big Horn in 1876.  Therefore, Fred Dent Grant survived into the 20th century.  After the Scribbler shared the curious item with college friends in the early 1960s, we began labeling any stray historical fact without serious meaning as a "Fred Dent Grant."  So, the Scribbler was amused to find a real "Fred Dent Grant" story in "The Real Boys of the Civil War," a book recently compiled and edited by J. Arthur Moore, a retired history teacher who now lives in Narvon, PA.  Moore briefly describes Fred Grant's first experiences as a soldier when he was 12 and 13 years old.  The young Grant accompanied his father to the Vicksburg battlefields.  The younger Grant was shot, not seriously, and saw other wounded men in a hospital. "The scenes were so terrible," he reported, "that I became faint, and making my way to a tree, sat down, the most woe-begone twelve year old in America."  Similar reminiscences of boys who fought for the Union and the Confederacy make up much of "The Real Boys" Capsule biographies of individual boys -- collected from original sources and more recent compilers....and make this a useful source book.  Moore explained the genesis of his book to the Solanco Historical Society earlier this month.  "As a teacher, I believed kids would be more interested in seeing the war through the eyes of their peers," he said.  Both the Union and the Confederacy formally held to a minimum age requirement of 18, but thousands of boys ignored the rules and went to war, often as drummers, buglers or fifers.  When they got older, many became soldiers.  Some boys were wounded.  Others died.  Several were awarded the Medal of Honor.  Some went home because their young eyes had witnessed to much of war.  Edward Black enlisted as the drummer boy of the 21st Indiana Volunteers in the summer of 1861.  He was 8 years old, apparently the youngest Union soldier and the youngest boy ever to serve in the U.S. Army.  He was a veteran at age 11.  Charley King, of West Chester, joined the 49th Pennsylvania Regiment as a drummer boy in 1861.  He was 12 years old.  His commander promised his parents he would be kept safe from harm.  Harm found King in the form of Confederate artillery fire at the Battle of Antietam in 1862.  At age 13, he seems to be the youngest boy killed in the war.  Willie Johnson also was a 12-year-old drummer marching with Vermont's 3rd infantry during the Peninsula Campaign of 1862.  Many drummers lost their instruments during battlefield defeats.  Johnson made sure he kept his drum.  President Abraham Linicoln took notice.  The next year, at age 13, Johnston was awarded the Medal of Honor.  David Wood was 10 years old in 1861 when he joined the 6th Missouri Cavalry.  Officially, he served as an orderly.  Unofficially, he began making lemonade and selling other "small delicacies" to soldiers.  "I developed an outfit that made me in the neighborhood of $2,000 while I was in the army," he reported.  Copies of Moore's liberally illustrated book can be purchased from Omnibook Co. of New York and through the author's website, jarthurmoore.com.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.