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20 Lesser Known History Facts That Captured Attention

Khalid Elhassan June 24, 2019 23 min

Battle of Carrhae - Parthian Empire — The Battle of Carrhae. Battles of the Ancients

7. Child Soldiers Were Everywhere You Looked During the Civil War

Roughly a fifth of American Civil War military personnel were under 18. The Union Army had over 100,000 soldiers under 15. There were even children as young as eight in uniform. On land, they were usually used in non-combatant positions, but were often just as exposed to fire as adults on the front line. At sea, children in the US Navy served as “powder monkeys”. Tasked during combat with rushing gunpowder from magazines to canons, they were just as exposed to danger as everybody else aboard ship.

There were age restrictions – in the Union, enlistees had to be over 16 – but they were frequently ignored. Many under-aged Northern boys, for example, had little trouble finding recruiters willing to sign them up, provided they swore that they were “over 16”. Some reconciled their consciences with the lie by writing the number “16” on a piece of paper and sticking it to the bottom of a shoe, so they could honestly swear that they were “over 16”.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.