Join us for a lunchtime talk with historians Frances M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant on boy soldiers and demographic anxiety in the Confederacy. Their recent book, Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era, is the first comprehensive study of how Americans responded to the unauthorized enlistment of minors in the Civil War and the implications that followed. Clarke and Plant offer military, legal, medical, social, political and cultural perspectives as well as demographic analysis of this important aspect of the war. An original and sweeping work, Of Age convincingly demonstrates why underage enlistment is such an important lens for understanding the history of children and youth and the transformative effects of the U.S. Civil War. There will be a book signing after the talk. You can purchase the book in the Library’s Virginia Shop.

The book received the 2024 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, which is awarded annually for the finest scholarly work in English on Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier or the American Civil War era.

For more information, contact Anne McCrery at anne.mccrery@lva.virginia.gov or 804.692.3568. This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required. Limited free parking is available underneath the Library at 800 East Broad Street.