Studying Underage Enlistment in the American Civil War

Drawn from a panel created for the 2017 American Historical Association Conference in Denver and framed by Michael Grossberg's commentary, this roundtable offers case studies of three very different moments when the law attempted to define the nature of childhood. Rebecca Jo Plant and Frances M. Clarke explore that definition in the context of underage soldiers during the American Civil War; Nicholas L. Syrett examines it in the context of miscegenation and illegitimacy at the turn of the twentieth century, and Jennifer Robin Terry investigates it in the context of legislation protecting child performers in the first few decades of the twentieth century.