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Fascinating Civil War Facts that Won’t be in the History Books

Khalid Elhassan February 8, 2021 33 min

Battle of Fort Sanders - American Civil War — Confederates in action during the Civil War. Buyenlarge Archive Photos

16. An Ingenious Expedient to Lie About One’s Age Without Actually Lying

Union Sergeant John Lincoln Clem, the youngest non-commissioned officer in the history of the US Army. Wikimedia

Civil war child soldiers, like children throughout the ages, were often full of curiosity and frequently heedless of and insensate to danger and mortal risk to life and limb. That being so, there were many occasions in which child soldiers snuck off to the firing lines, in order to see the excitement of battle from up close. Once there, in the heat of battle, many child soldiers picked up rifles and rushed into the maelstrom, fighting and dying alongside the adults.

There were age restrictions on official enlistment in the ranks. In the Union, enlistees had to be over sixteen. However, such restrictions were often ignored, and most under-aged Northern boys, eager to enlist, had little trouble in finding recruiters willing to sign them up. All an underage recruit had to do was put one hand on the Bible, raise the other, and swear that he was “over sixteen”. Some children ingeniously 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. That enabled them to honestly swear that they were “over 16”.

Also Check: Heartbreaking Photographs of Child Soldiers from WWI and WWII.

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.