It is amazing they did allow such young people to do those very difficult jobs. Back then, the life expectance was younger than it is now and since so many left any education they were lucky to get to take jobs in any busines makes it easier to understand why they were allowed to do that. Some of the old classics I've dusted off and am hoping to reread this summer are about some of that. Two Years Before The Mast, Moby Dick and others give us insight. It was a different time. Childhood didn't earn much needed money so the age to start a career was earlier than we'd allow today. As with the Civil War, we've to to take it in the context of that time, not our own.

Pam