Jim Murphy - The Boys War: Confederate and Union Soldiers Talk About the Civil War

Then the batteries opened on all sides [of Sumter] as if an army of devils were swooping around it.

On April 12, 1861, thousands of Confederate troops were assembled in the still darkness of early morning, looking out toward the mouth of Charleston Harbor. The object of their attention was a squat brick structure sitting on an island one mile away: Fort Sumter. Inside, Robert Anderson, a major in the Union army, along with sixty-eight soldiers, braced for the attack.

Slowly, darkness lifted and Sumters shape became more and more distinct. Confederate gunners adjusted the firing angle of their weapons, torches poised near the fuses. At exactly 4:30 A.M., General P. G. T. Beauregard gave the command, and the bombardmentand with it the Civil Warbegan.

An officer inside Fort Sumter described the wars opening shot: The eyes of the watchers easily detected and followed the shell as it mounted among the stars, and then descended with ever-increasing velocity, until it landed inside the fort and burst. It was a capital shot. Then the batteries opened on all sides [of Sumter] as if an army of devils were swooping around it.

For most of us, the Civil War is an event we meet briefly in our history books, a distant and sometimes dry parade of proclamations, politicians, generals, and battles. But for the soldiers who marched off and fought, the Civil War was all too real and consuming. In the pages that follow, youll meet and hear a very special brand of Confederate and Union soldierboys sixteen years old and younger.

No one knows exactly how many boys managed to join their sides army Enlistment procedures were very lax, and record-keeping sloppy and often nonexistent. After the war, an army statistician did manage to do a study of several battalions, matching names with birth certificates when possible. From this he estimated that between 10 and 20 percent of all soldiers were underage when they signed up. That means that anywhere from 250,000 to 420,000 boys may have fought in the Civil War!

We might not know how many boys took part in the war, but we certainly have a clear picture of what they experienced and felt. Almost every soldier sent letters home, and a surprising number kept journals and diaries, wrote memoirs about their adventures or articles and histories of their companies.

Usually, their writing is very simple and will sound choppy to our ears. Their spelling is more creative than accurate. This is because they were uneducated farm boys for the most part, away from home for the first time, and only interested in telling what had happened to them and their friends. Everything seemed to fascinate them, toothe long marches, the people they met along the way, the fighting, the practical jokes they played on one another. Even the making of bread was an event worth noting.

Its true that their writing lacks a historians ability to focus on the important issues. But it is this directness and eye for everyday details that make the voices of these boys so fresh and believable and eloquent. And it is their ability to create active, vivid scenes that brings the war, in all its excitement and horror, alive after more than one hundred years.

Thirty-four hours and over four thousand shot and shells later, Sumters forty-foot-high walls were battered and crumbling. Fires consumed portions of the interior and were moving closer to the powder magazine. No one inside the fort had been seriously injured in the bombardment, but the outcome of the fight was inevitable. The battle for Fort Sumter ended with the surrender of Union forces on April 14.

Before leaving the fort, Union troops were allowed a brief flag-lowering ceremony accompanied by a cannon salute of fifty guns. (Oddly enough, a freak accident during this ceremony caused an explosion that killed two menthe first victims of the Civil War.) Then, with banners flying and the drums beating the rhythm to Yankee Doodle, Andersons small force marched aboard the steamship Baltic and headed for New York. Beauregards soldiers entered the burning fort triumphantly and raised the Confederate Stars and Bars. Even before the smoke had a chance to clear, the nationincluding its boyswas ready to go off to war.

An unidentified Union soldier strikes a well-armed pose for the folks back home.

W HEN WORD OF Fort Sumters fall reached him in Washington, President Abraham Lincoln acted quickly, issuing a call for seventy-five thousand volunteers to put down the insurrection. News of the presidents call to arms spread with surprising speedby telegraph, newspaper headlines, and word of mouth. Thomas Galway was fifteen years old and living in Cleveland, Ohio, when he heard.

As I was coming from Mass this morning, Galway wrote in his journal, I saw bulletins posted everywhere announcing the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Large crowds were gathered in front of each bulletin board, people peering over one anothers head to catch a bit of the news. All seemed of one mind. Everyone talked of war.

Over in Indiana, fourteen-year-old Theodore Upson was working in the cornfield with his father when a neighbor came by. William Cory came across the field (he had been to town after the Mail). He was excited and said, the Rebs have fired upon and taken Fort Sumpter. Father got white and couldnt say a word.