continental army | Author Suzanne Adair

In the 14th Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army, twelve-year-old Private Joseph Moseley wore a uniform, carried a firearm that was probably taller than he was, and was paid six and two-thirds dollars per month. His two teenage brothers were also in the regiment. At home, the Moseley boys had left behind a mother widowed for eight years, and a brother and sister both younger than ten years old.

Joseph joined the 14th Virginia in early 1777. He was discharged after a year, in February 1778, just after his thirteenth birthday. During his year of service, the regiment participated in major battles: Brandywine and Germantown. Both battles were losses for the Continentals. Joseph may have endured winter camp at Valley Forge. He definitely saw morale in the Continental Army at its lowest point, before the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, and Baron von Steuben offered their aid and changed the course of the war.

Joseph Moseley was my great, great, great-grandfather. Until last week, when specific research details finally came to light, my family thought that Joseph had joined a militia unit as an older teen at the end of the war and spent a year performing low-profile duties for the men, such as gathering firewood, cleaning weapons, and digging latrines. We were stunned by the truth of a twelve-year-old boy in uniform who looked across battlefields at hundreds of disciplined redcoats with fixed bayonets.

Joseph's reasons for enlisting are among those found in the bulleted list from yesterday's post, disturbing echoes of the reasons why children enlist today. To imagine that he was the only child soldier in the Continental Army would be naïveté. He and countless other boys picked up the firearms of dead men and continued the fight for the Continentals. In doing so, they extended an armed conflict for six more years. And since our "Revolutionary War" was but one theater of a world war, the negative impact on the global economy was staggering.

Nations and factions have been using child soldiers for thousands of years. The effect on the children is a no-brainer. Joseph Moseley and the boys who fought at his side had no childhood. At the least, they suffered from some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder for the rest of their lives, even if they volunteered for duty and were discharged with no physical injuries.

Today's child soldiers in Africa, Asia, South America, and the Middle East are all of humanity's casualties. They show us the costs of war, no matter how hard we try to look elsewhere. The horrific imagery of child soldiers will continue to haunt us until we learn this lesson from history.

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Among the most horrific, haunting images recorded from war around the globe are those of vacant-eyed children in their early teens or even younger holding semi-automatic weapons, perhaps garbed in a paramilitary unit's uniform. In the United States, these images batter a belief system that children should be in a nurturing home environment, enjoying the company of friends after school, taking clarinet lessons, playing softball. They should be allowed to be kids and dream.

Enlisting children as soldiers permits the extension of armed conflict long after a desperate nation or faction's supply of adult combatants has been exhausted. The global costs are astronomical. Although some children are forced to join armed groups, according to The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, the majority of these children volunteer for the following reasons:

Survival
Desire to avenge the death of relatives
Poverty and lack of access to education or work (thus the need for income)
Desire for power, status, and social recognition
Pressure from family or peers
Desire to honor a family tradition
Desire to escape domestic violence (and for girls an arranged marriage)

What does the topic of child soldiers have to do with the American War of Independence? In the United States, we tell ourselves that we don't put our young children in uniform, that such extreme measures happen elsewhere, in distant lands. But Americans have inherited the bloody legacy of young children in the military.

We have the "quaint" pictures of boys climbing ratlines on navy ships in the Civil War and the American War of Independence, and drummer boys in both wars. Or the not-so-quaint pictures of ragged civilian children traveling with an army unit as camp followers. Did children camp followers, musicians, and sailors escape the bullets and bayonets? No.

Children don't escape war.

In the autumn of 1776, two years into the American War of Independence, the fight was going poorly for the Continentals. A desperate Congress went to recruitment extremes, determined to raise an army of eighty-eight infantry regiments, intending that the regiments serve for the duration of the war. A boy named Joseph Moseley answered the recruitment call in March 1777 and enlisted as a Continental private in the newly made 14th Virginia Regiment. Joseph had just turned twelve years old.

I invite you to return to my blog tomorrow and learn his story.

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Author Suzanne Adair

Tag Archives: continental army

Child Soldiers, Then and Now, Part 2

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Child Soldiers, Then and Now, Part 1

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