“Like previously unseen ghosts,” James Marten saw, “children peer out from Civil War photographs.”¹ His pathbreaking book brought them back from the unseen world by showing how the war reverberated through all aspects of their lives.

What happened to children on the state and local level, however, remains relatively elusive. I have chosen to examine Rebel children and their families in South Carolina, where the war erupted. Composed of a black majority, South Carolina earned the reputation as the most militant Confederate state. Seceding first, it was home to some of the region’s most influential politicians. Charleston, its chief port...

Confederate leaders made children central to why they seceded and went to war. Jefferson Davis, in his farewell speech to the U.S. Senate on January 21, 1861, defended Southern secession as a necessary action to protect their inherited rights and their “sacred duty to transmit [this legacy] unshorn to [their] children.” Contemporaries used the words “fever” and “whirlwind” to describe the phenomenon, which reached its peak in April 1861 with the firing on Fort Sumter. There was no turning back, no resource rejected. Both warring factions played the children’s card throughout the conflict.¹

From the outset, Northerners and Southerners saw...

Boy” was a nebulous term in Southern society in the 1860s. All black males were “boys.” On the other hand, the “boys of ’64” became a nostalgic term to describe Confederate veterans. “Mere boy” meant males under twenty. “Boyish” was used to describe women soldiers. “Boys” also appealed to the maternal instincts of Southern women, who saw them as the nation’s sons. The age of sixteen had been the enlistment standard during the American Revolution, but nearly a century later this statute did not fit the changing attitudes about childhood and their impact on demographics. In 1861 the Confederacy formally...

In 1860, childrearing in South Carolina was in transition from premodern to modern. The society was undergoing anxieties caused by the transition. Confederate men and women still subscribed to the supposed Christian ideal of family life, which was patriarchal. Gender shaped all aspects of childrearing. Girls were expected to be self-sacrificing and service-oriented; boys were encouraged to be aggressive. Thousands of men left their homes to fight in a war that lasted for years. This heightened anxieties, causing strain and instability in family households. How parents negotiated in dealing with childrearing under these circumstances is revealed as this chapter discusses...

Southerners expected the war to bring a quick victory to the Confederacy. It did not, and as the war continued, a volunteer army became insufficient. The Conscription Act of 1862 was passed, requiring all men between the ages of eighteen and thirty to serve. Those ranging from eighteen and over thirty-five, already in the army, had to serve an additional ninety days. Two weeks after Antietam, in September 1862, the age limits were changed to seventeen and forty-five. The upper age limit was subsequently raised to fifty. Married men with children were caught in this expanding war net. David Golightly...

Confederate leaders in South Carolina had no master plan for education when their state abruptly seceded in December 1860. The ensuing war disrupted schools and drastically reduced the number of teachers; families scrambled to find ways to maintain local schools. Women tried to fill the gap, but their contributions did not resolve a worsening teacher shortage. Although many parents were primarily focused on their children learning the basics under trying and distracting circumstances, state educators were working with their counterparts throughout the Confederacy in a nation-building reform movement to end Yankee influence. Religious leaders played a pivotal role in this...

Put a high price on yourself,” a Southern newspaper warned girls wanting good husbands who could provide for them. In 1864 the impact of the war caused the YorkvilleEnquirerto reprint this piece of counsel highlighted “Something for the Girls.”

Put off the ways of children. Your girlish days will soon be over. Be helpful to the marriage. Do not be too forward or anxious; exercise prudence and modesty, and avoid noisy or boisterous behavior that men do not like. Do not adorn yourselves with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array. Those too anxious to marry...

Perhaps the Civil War’s greatest impact on children,” Steven Mintz has noted, “was on family life.” The widows, children, poor, and elderly of South Carolina paid dearly. South Carolina households went “up the spout” because the war drained their districts of doctors and skilled artisans vital to the smooth functioning of their communities. Men critically needed at home were swept up into the vortex of the battlefield; thousands died. Many more became sick and wounded. Morale at home sunk with shortages, inflation, and an ever-increasing list of casualties. Poor households suffered egregiously, while the economic viability of yeoman families hung...

Between 1861 and 1865, South Carolina underwent a baptism by fire. In November 1861 the Great Fire of Charleston swept though the city. During a 587-day siege, Greek fire rained down on the population. On the morning of February 18, 1865, the fate of the city was sealed when the last Confederate troops left. An enormous explosion at the city’s Northeastern Depot followed their departure. Caused by children playing, the disaster killed more than one hundred people and injured about an equal number. As Union soldiers entered the city, Confederates rushed to destroy thePalmetto State, the repaired ironclad that...

Beginning in July 1861, Magnolia Cemetery became an integral part of Confederate folklore. Charleston nearly shut down as growing crowds watched a procession transport the dead soldiers of Bull Run from the train station to St. Paul’s Church. The procession culminated in a ceremony at Magnolia, where there is now a Confederate section. Ten years later, on Confederate Memorial Day, six thousand people hailed the return of dozens of South Carolinians who had fallen at Gettysburg. They were reinterred at the cemetery. The Rev. John L. Girardeau passionately urged the gathering: “Afflicted Carolina, rise in thy mourning weeds, and receive...

Bishop Benjamin Tanner, active in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, denounced the deification of the evangelical Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson: “The prayers of Stonewall Jackson were as refreshing to Beelzebub as a draught of ice water.” Tanner knew the canonizing of Confederate heroes could endanger the opportunities for blacks and their progeny wrought by the war. He was convinced that Congressional Reconstruction (1867–1876) heralded the beginning of a New World. Black ministers, such as Tanner, offered a millennial interpretation of the war, climaxing in “The Promised Land” of a multiracial democracy.¹

For African Americans, Reconstruction...

Since the 1890s, two conflicting legacies of the Civil War and Reconstruction have competed for hegemony in South Carolina. More than any organization, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) realized that children were central in preserving “Confederate Culture.” Racial Radicals who eviscerated Hampton’s paternalism abetted them. The blow to the rights blacks had gained under Congressional Reconstruction became final when the general departed to serve in the U.S. Senate. D. W. Griffith’sBirth of a Nation, based on Thomas Dixon’sThe Clansmen, captured in 1915 the racist mindset of the period.¹

Ironically, Racial Radicalism, by establishing Jim Crow segregation,...