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The Museum of the Confederacy plans a variety of fun programs and events for families throughout the year. Explore what’s happening at the Museum and bring your parents face to face with history!
Recommend our website to your teacher for field trip planning, free classroom materials and more. Bring your class face to face with history!
Make Your Own Drum!
 1. Use an empty shortening or coffee can. 2. Measure the circumference and height of the can and cut a piece of butcher paper or construction paper to go around the can. 3. Before attaching the paper, decorate it with a patriotic design. 4. Wrap the paper around the can and secure with either glue or tape. 5. For drumsticks, have an adult cut a dowel rod into two foot-long segments.
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Children and their parents should explore the Civil War information and activities provided in this section together. While the content is designed "just for kids," visitors of all ages may find the resources in this section both entertaining and educational.
Children in the Civil War
While discussions of the Civil War usually highlight the experiences of men in battle or women on the homefront, the war also affected children’s lives. Boys and girls, North and South, seemed to develop a deeper sense of patriotism, family pride, duty, honor and political interest because of the war. Most had fathers, brothers or other family members going off to war. With the majority of the conflict occurring in Confederate states, a Southern child could expect either to be able to see and hear a battle close by or to have to evacuate in the face of an approaching battle. Those staying at home attended rallies, listened to patriotic music and speeches, helped supply soldiers at the front by rolling bandages or holding fundraising fairs, and did work that their parents would have done. Even while playing the war crept into their lives for the most popular pastimes included drilling, marching and playing war.
- At the White House of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, Jr., wore an artillery major’s uniform made by his mother and played with a working toy cannon. In the winter of 1864, Jeff spent time in the camp of a famous military unit, the Washington Artillery. Unlike other boys just a few years older than he, Jeff Davis, Jr., was able to return home after only a few days.
Young men 17 years-old and older were eligible to serve in the Confederate armed forces. However, some younger boys managed to become soldiers. Here are some stories of young southern boys riding into battle:
- Some of the known youthful recruits in the Confederate army are:
- E.G. Baxter of Clark County, Kentucky, recorded as enlisting in Company A, 7th Kentucky Cavalry in June, 1862,when he was not quite thirteen (birth date: September 10, 1849), and a year later was a second lieutenant.
- W.D. Peak of Oliver Springs, Tennessee, was fourteen when he joined Company A, 26th Tennessee.
- Matthew J. McDonald, Company I, 1st Georgia Cavalry, began service also at fourteen.
- M.W. Jewett of Virginia is said to have been a private in the 59th Virginia at thirteen, serving in South Carolina, Florida, and at the siege of Petersburg.
- T.G. Bean of Pickensville, Alabama, was probably the war’s most youthful recruiter. He organized two companies at the University of Alabama in 1861, when he was thirteen, though he did not get into service until two years later, when he served as adjutant of the cadet corps taken into the Confederate armies.
- At the Battle of New Market in the Shenandoah Valley, the corps of cadets of the Virginia Military Institute fought as infantry. The battalion of cadets, the majority of whom were in their mid to late teens, turned the tide of the battle for a Confederate victory.
- John T. Mason of Fairfax County, Virginia, went through the first battle of Manassas as a "marker" for the battle lines of the 17th Virginia Infantry at age fourteen. He trained as a midshipman in the Confederate Navy, and was aboard the famed cruiser Shenandoah.
Boys were not the only children to experience the war first hand.
- Carrie Berry lived in Atlanta while it was under siege by the Union Army. The 10 year-old wrote in her diary in Aug., 1864, "We can hear the canons and muskets very plane, but the shells we dread. One has busted under the dining room which frightened us very much. One passed through the smoke-house and a piece hit the top of the house and fell through but we were at Auntie Markham's, so none of us were hurt. We stay very close in the cellar when they are shelling." Carrie Berry’s diary is in the collections of the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, Georgia.
- Alice Williamson was 16 years-old when the Federal army occupied her hometown of Gallatin, Tennessee. She confided to her diary in 1864 the resentment and dislike her fellow Confederates felt for the Union troops and the difficulties of life under occupation. They needed passes to travel and Federal troops seized their furniture. But through all the turmoil, she still attended school and social events.
Alice Williamson’s diary is in the William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
The war affected the daily lives of girls like Alice Williamson drastically, but in some ways daily life went on as it always had. Many children continued to receive their lessons in such subjects as arithmetic, spelling and geography. In the Confederacy, some children studied out of specially published books like The Confederate Spelling Book or Southern Confederate Arithmetic for Common Schools and Academies. The Primary Geography Book, published in Richmond in 1865, reminded readers that its lessons were for "The Dixie Children." For the most part the lessons were typical of the time, reminding children to behave as good little boys and girls and learn their lessons, but the books sometimes showed hostility toward the North.
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