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During the American Civil War (1861–65), both the Union and the Confederacy used children as young as ten as soldiers and sailors. The photograph is of a young sailor serving as a powder monkey, a naval term for someone assigned to bring gunpowder from a ship’s magazine to its cannons. The picture is from the later years of the Civil War and features the deck of the USS New Hampshire (some sources identify the ship as the USS Pawnee, a much smaller vessel). The New Hampshire was launched in May 1864 and served as part of the naval blockade of the coast of South Carolina until the war ended the following year.