James Marten is a professor of history and the chair of the history department at Marquette University, where he teaches courses on the Civil War and on children's history. He is the author of The Children's Civil War (1998), which was selected as an outstanding academic title by Choice magazine; Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (2011); and America's Corporal: James Tanner in War and Peace (2014). He is also the editor of Children and War: An Historical Anthology (2002) and Childhood and Child Welfare in the Progressive Era: A Brief History with Documents (2004).
The Civil War invaded every element of children's lives--North and South, black and white. This lecture samples some of the ways in which children were both victims and actors in the America's bloodiest war.