During this war each army had to get more soldiers to fight on their side. Before the two armies were split there were only about 16,000 men in the U.S. army (Kurtz 44). In order to increase this number they had to draft soldiers. At the beginning of the war the first Confederate military draft was only for white males between the ages of 18 and 35, but when many of the soldiers died they widened the age limit to 17 to 50 years old (Gragg 71). In the North all able-bodied men under the age of 45 had to register to fight in the war. After all of those men were recruited, by the end of the war, a total of about 2,700,000 men had enlisted

In the Civil War blacks were involved too. In the South there were some free blacks. They would offer their services to either army, hoping that it would secure better treatment of blacks. On the battlefront, black slaves were far more common than free blacks. The slaves were laborers of the South and during the war they still served that role. The Confederacy used slaves to build fortifications, work on its railroads, load supplies, work in its hospitals, cook meals, and bury the dead (Haskins 27). These are all non-fighting jobs that needed to be done. Sometimes blacks would be musicians for the army, also. It was not very often when a slave would actually fight.

This war was sometimes called "The Boys’ War", because there were so many young men in the war. More than 2,000,000 Union soldiers were twenty-one years old or younger, about 200,000 soldiers were sixteen or younger, and 25 soldiers were ten or younger (Davis 63).

Fighting was what many of the men looked forward to in camp, but when they really had to go out and fight they found out that it was not so great. On the battlefield most of the soldiers were not very skilled, because they had not had very much military training. They were taught different techniques at the military camps. Towards the beginning of the war the guns were not the best, so the two armies would fire at each other while they were advancing. When they got close enough to each other they would use their bayonets to stab the enemy or they would hit them with the butts of their guns (Robertshaw 25). Further on in the war the gun companies made better guns so that the soldiers could fight in trenches.

or been drafted into the Union Army (Davis 63).

This war was really “the bloodiest war in Americaâ€

Some topics in this essay:
Robertson Jr, Union Confederate, Civil War, Union North, Boys’ War, North South, Army Davis, Union Army, robertson jr, beginning war, United America, civil war, robertson jr 71, union confederate, military training, camp life, soldiers fight, snowball fights, towards beginning, robertson jr 35, towards beginning war, ray 30,