Of Age

Reviews / Votes

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. * Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal * Of Age...explain[s] the history of the nation's changing view of the appropriate age for military service and illuminate the underlying debate about authority over the labor and lives of young men that developed during the Civil War. The authors make it clear that widespread underage service affected tens of thousands of young men and families. They convincingly argue that the practice of underage recruitment brought growing Federal power into direct conflict with the traditional authority and sanctity of the home, a potent symbol of the transformative nature of the Civil War....A valuable work on an understudied topic....Its clear writing and helpful chapter summaries help reinforce the authors' central points about how the scale of the conflict led to a transformation of the relationship between the military and families and how the reliance on underage soldiers changed society's expectations of youth. * Creston Long, International Social Science Review * It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, you know. You're reading a book, and you sense that what you have in your hands is a game-changer. This happened as I read Of Age....Frances Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant studied what many had long believed to be an exaggeration at best and mythical propaganda at worst - the number of underaged boys who fought in the Civil War - and discovered something startingly different. The result is a work that changes our understanding of the Civil War, arguably the most powerful event in the history of the United States.... It changes our perception and understanding of the war itself, through the lens of how both the Union and the Confederacy used some of the most vulnerable members of society to fight. These children...picked up rifles and fought alongside men of legal age. Clarke and Plant make sure their rightful story is told and their contribution recognized. * Glynn Young, Dancing Priest blog * By taking seriously a phenomenon that other historians have too often overlooked and underestimated, this landmark volume overturns both popular and scholarly assumptions about the 'boy soldiers' who fought in the American Civil War. Elegantly crafted and expertly researched, Of Age breaks new ground in the history of household relations, the law, popular culture, state power, labor, and the boundaries of citizenship in the nineteenth century. It is a must-read. * W. Caleb McDaniel, author of Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America * Of Age is not simply a major revision of our understanding of underage boys in the Civil War, although it delivers on that promise in full; it is also a profound reinterpretation of military service and of the soldiers' experience itself, one all Civil War and military historians should rush to read. Clarke and Plant have conducted extraordinarily intensive archival work to demonstrate that roughly 10 percent of the U.S. Army enrolled underage. Even more impressively, they develop a powerful analytic framework for understanding how that service should reshape our understanding of the history of childhood and the history of the Civil War Era. A triumph. * Gregory P. Downs, author of After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War * This remarkable, groundbreaking history takes a subject of enormous contemporary interest-the thousands of youths who serve in armed conflicts as soldiers, sex slaves, human shields, spies, and suicide bombers-and reveals with vivid detail the extent to which the Union and Confederate armies relied on the young not simply as buglers, drummers, messengers, scouts, or hospital orderlies, but as combatants. This book not only recovers juvenile soldiers' wartime experience but also shows how their participation in the conflict intensified American society's age consciousness, diminished parental authority, transformed attitudes toward the young, enhanced teenagers' autonomy, and expanded the authority of the federal government. * Steven Mintz, author of Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood * Societies wage war with the twin currencies of money and soldiers, often without scrutinizing the source of the soldiers. In Of Age, Clarke and Plant explore how the Union and Confederacy raised their respective armies during the Civil War by employing soldiers younger than the accepted age of 18. This wide-ranging study touches on military, political, economic, and family history before concluding that both armies comprised a significant number of troops considered children by today's standard, perhaps as much as 20 percent. Consequently, the use of underage soldiers raised questions and challenges about the obligations of boy soldiers to their families, especially their labor in agrarian economies; the social ramifications of wartime definitions of adulthood versus childhood; and the rights of enslaved peoples both before and after the Emancipation Proclamation. * Choice * The authors make a series of complex arguments underpinned by extensive archival work...the book is elegantly conceived and compellingly written,...The authors must be commended for this singular achievement. * James J. Broomall, Shepherd University * [This] impressively comprehensive and deeply researched study of underage recruits both North and South...plunge[s] their readers into the realities of the lives of the youths who comprised a meaningful segment of both Union and Confederate armies... Of Age is a masterwork, providing a panoramic view of the experiences of child and teenage combatants in the Civil War. It is one of the rare academic studies that does not just expand the field, it redefines it. Anyone wanting to understand on-the-ground military experience during the Civil War must from now on consider the sheer numbers of young people among the troops, and how their presence shaped not just the war but the direction of the country. * Sarah E. Chinn, Civil War History * Elegantly conceived and compellingly written... In a crowded field, Clarke and Plant have achieved something quite remarkable. They have written a groundbreaking history of an entirely neglected topic. By so doing, they create an analytical framework that reshapes our understanding of a society at war and the long-term social, political, and legal consequences of wartime debates over boy soldiers. The authors must be commended for this singular achievement. * James J. Broomall, History: Reviews of New Books *