Book about underage Civil War soldiers -- and how they were unsuited and unprepared -- wins prestigious Lincoln prize

Co-authors of a book about underage soldiers in the Civil War and a 19^th-century society little concerned about their mental wellbeing have received the 2024 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.

Frances M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant will be honored April 4 at the Harvard Club in New York City for “Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era” (Oxford University Press).

The Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize is awarded annually for the finest scholarly work in English on Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier or the Civil War era. The award includes a $50,000 prize and bronze replicas of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s life-sized bust, “Lincoln the Man.”

Clarke and Plant “determined that at least 10 percent of Union troops were under the legal age of 21 (later 18 with an act of Congress) -- far higher than the 1.6 percent estimated by previous historians,” wrote Dave Kindy in an article last year at History.net about the topic. Confederate troops had a similar proportion.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Gettysburg College recently announced the award.

James G. Basker, president of the institute, said the book "is not only breakthrough history, it is a compelling and moving read, full of the stories of children, some as young as 11 or 12, serving in the Civil War, and the struggles of parents to reclaim or liberate their underage sons from armies into which they had enlisted.

The authors also found African American youths discovered that both Union and Confederate officers ignored their evident age when using them as conscripts or military laborers. 

Kindy wrote the work is “filled with accounts of teens on both sides who heroically answered the call of duty and the tragedy of so many who met their fate on the battlefield or succumbed to the rigors of a military life that was wholly unsuited to young minds and bodies.”

Clarke is an associate professor of history at the University of Sydney, Australia. Plant is a professor of history and an Academic Senate Distinguished Teacher at the University of California, San Diego.