Thanks! I've got the Young Lions book requested on interlibrary loan, as well as a volume on Virginia underage units and a book on the family of a South Carolina "boy soldier." The latter two were suggested in response to a query I posted on H-CivWar. I'll see what I can draw from these books, at least enough for a footnote suggesting other sources dealing with that specific topic. I rechecked Marten's The Children's Civil War, but he really only addresses younger boys too young to enlist at all. There are several books out now on Southern belles and the war. Maybe we need one, or perhaps only an article, that looks on the pressures on adolescent males. I know, microhistory at its worst, but I've read many reminiscences, letters and diaries where boys 12-17 became "the man of the house," the mainstay of their farming families, and yet the pull was definitely there to get free of those demands, join the army, become a man, revenge some family loss.

Vicki Betts