Joel Arthur Moore's Blog – July 2015 Archive (5)

David Wood was 10 years old when the war broke out. His father, Samuel, had moved the family from Ohio to Kansas in 1854 to help “Free Staters” keep slavery out of the territory. The elder Wood forged a reputation as the “Fighting Quaker.” Growing up surrounded by hostility, it was natural for David to feel ready to march off with the troops when his father became lieutenant colonel of the 6th  Missouri Cavalry in 1861. - See more at:…

More than 200,000 under-aged boys, 17 years old and younger and some as young as nine, served in the armies of the Union and the Confederacy. With the approach of war in 1861, there was an air of excitement and adventure in the expectant assuredly that war was inevitable. Boys as young as six signed up in their local home guard units and as young as seven in local companies organized in the expectation of being called out to fight the enemy. Prevailing attitudes and opinions of the time…

Boys, like this one aboard the U.S.S. New Hampshire, were called powder monkeys because they ran bags of gunpowder from the stores below deck to the gun crews, moving with speed and agility. These boy assistants, as young as 10 years old, slept in hammocks below the gun decks. They were selected for their job because of their speed and height – short so they would be hidden behind the ship’s gunwale, keeping them from being shot by enemy ships’ sharp shooters. - See more at:…

During the years of the Civil War, death and dying became an even stronger focus of interest. This had been the case before the war, when most people died at home surrounded on their deathbed by family. But during the war many families were suffering the loss of loved ones in the war, from disease as well as combat, often far from home and family. In Sean A. Scott’s work, two main focuses for comfort were put forth. The first was the religious, dying the perfect death and going to be with…

James Marten, in his collection of essays about Children and Youth During the Civil War Era, wrote that the question had been raised, “Have social historians lost the Civil War?”1 Civil War historians and historians of children and youth had generally ignored the children and youth who participated in the war. Small Worlds: Children and Adolescents in America, 1850-1950, edited by Elliot West and Paula Petrik, referred to the war on page 93 in reference to toys of the era. Growing Up in…