Confederate Pride
The Youngest of The Brave

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By the last year of the Civil War, marching along together in the Confederate army were
  gray-headed oldsters and boys who had never shaved. The Confederate military draft at first applied
  only to white males between 18 and 35, but by early 1864 the eligibility had been widened to include
  those from 17 through 50, although many Southerners younger and older slipped thru the age lines.
  Younger soldiers, and many who were much older also saw service in the Junior Reserves and
Senior Reserves, which were organized by many Southern states.
George S. Lamkin of Winona, Mississippi, joined Stanford's Mississippi Battery when
he was eleven, and before his twelfth birthday was severely wounded at Shiloh.

Note: Thanks to Gary Wade, Capt. Commanding 50th Va. Co. D Re-enactors,
who provided the following information about his Great Grandfather's CSA service. Dimmon Baker from McDowell County Virginia,  now W. Virginia, entered the Confederate Service as a substitute at age 14. He was paid $10.00 and 4 mules by the substitute . He rode with Jeb Stuart in the 34th Va. Cavalry. .Also, his GGGrandfather, James L Bishop, was Capt. of the 50th Va. Co. D at the close of the war.

T.D. Claiborne, who left Virginia Military Institute at thirteen, in 1861, reportedly became captain of the 18th Virginia that year , and was killed in 1864, at seventeen.

E.G. Baxter, of Clark County, Kentucky, is recorded as enlisting in Company A, 7th Kentucky Cavalry in June, 1862, when he was not quite thirteen.

John Bailey Tyler, of D Troop, 1st Maryland Cavalry, born, was twelve when war came. He fought with his regiment until the end.

T.G. Bean, of Pickensville, Alabama, the war's most youthful recruiter, organized two companies at the University of Alabama when he was thirteen.  Entered service at age fifteen serving as adjutant of the cadet corps taken into the Confederate armies.

Matthew J. McDonald was fourteen when he began service with the 1st Georgia Cavalry, Company I.

One of Francis Scott Key's grandsons, Billings Steele, who lived near Annapolis, Maryland, crossed the Potomac to join the rangers of Colonel John S. Mosby, at the age of sixteen.

The youngest Confederate general was William Paul Roberts of North Carolina, a cavalry commander who went to war at the age of twenty.

M.W. Jewett, of Ivanhoe, Virginia, is said to have been a private in the 59th Virginia at thirteen, serving at Charleston, South Carolina, in Florida, and at the siege of Petersburg.

W.D. Peak, of Oliver Springs, Tennessee, was fourteen when he joined Company A, 26th Tennessee.

Matthew J. McDonald, of Company I, 1st Georgia Cavalry, began service at the
age fourteen.

John T. Mason of Fairfax County, Virginia, went through the first battle of Manassas with the 17th Virginia at age fourteen, was trained in the Confederate Navy aboard the cruiser Shenandoah.
 
 

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