The Horry County Museum and the AVX Foundation present a lecture by Joe Long on Cadet & Boy Soldiers of SC during the Civil War on Saturday, August 26th, at 1:00 PM.
In 1864, with the strategic situation in crisis, the South Carolina legislature took the desperate step of calling up new forces from among the state’s teenagers. These forces, led by wounded veterans or older men from the community (sometimes their own schoolteachers!) were known as the “South Carolina Junior Reserves”, and they served through all of the dangers and miseries of the Carolinas Campaign of 1865.
Their stories, and those of other underage soldiers serving in South Carolina forces, are a part of our state’s rich military history. “Cadets and Boy Soldiers” is a presentation about these “Boy Scout” or “JROTC”- aged youth, who took to the field in our nation’s greatest and most tragic conflict.
Joe Long is the Curator of Education for the SC Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, where he has worked since 2002. He holds an MA in History from Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Georgia, and has been published in Civil War Historian magazine, the Journal of the South Carolina Historical Society, and elsewhere; he has also appeared on the television shows “History Detectives”, “Carolina Stories” and the Travel Channel’s “Mysteries at the Museum”. Joe has written or co-written several of the Confederate Relic Room’s exhibits, including “Through Fiery Trials: Religion in Civil War South Carolina”, and “Paths of Destruction: Sherman’s Final Campaign”. He is currently working on a biography of General Maxcey Gregg. Joe lives with his wife and small horde of children in Cayce, SC; his oldest son is a rising junior at The Citadel.
The program will be held in the Museum’s McCown Auditorium located at 805 Main Street, Conway, SC 29526. For more information, call 843-915-5320 or email hcgmuseum@horrycounty.org. The view a full list of scheduled programs for 2017, visit the museum website at www.horrycountymuseum.org.