Military strategy. Announcer next, an author discusses the lives of children during the colonial period including their status and justice system. This was recorded at the annual American Historical Association meeting. Holly brower is professor of history at the university of maryland. She is also author of the book by birth or through consent to go being here onyou cspan3s American History tv. A broadegin with question. How were children viewed in the 16th century, raced on your research, compared to those now in the 21st century . Ms. Brewer there was not as much distinction between childhood and adulthood. Not even close. Children had the legal capacity to do a variety of things and be responsible for things in a way we would not be today. It is almost beyond how we can imagine. For example, i found an example of a fiveyearold putting his mark at the bottom of an apprenticeship contract that binding himself to labor until he turns 24. It was considered legally binding. I found an eightyearold executed for arson. I found children marrying as early as two or three. In a fundamental way, there was not the same notion of what we take for granted now, that children had to have, people had to have meaningful consent to be bound. So childhood and adulthood, there was much more of a continuum than there is now. Host i guess we should point out, the Life Expectancy of the 1600s and 1700s was what . Ms. Brewer about 40. It was changing rapidly at this point. But that is to, it is low. Because a lot of people died before they reached their fifth birthday because of diseases, lack of vaccinations. Childhood diseases killed many more really Young Children. But, once you passed your fifth birthday, Life Expectancy was not bad. It wasnt unusual to live to age 60 or 70. Host was there a difference in between what we saw in the colonies, what would become the u. S. , versus what we saw in Great Britain . Brower miss b rewer i would say not that much. In fact, one of the things that really shocked me and i was looking at the details of what was going on in the colonies in terms of legal norms, was there was more in common between each colony i examined and britain because there were different colonies. Though there was one fundamental commonality, which was that Life Expectancy was shorter in the colonies, at least initially just because conditions were so hard, and the spread of diseases like malaria. Host if we looked at the British Parliament in the 1660s and the 16 70s with regard to this topic, what would we have seen . Ms. Brewer a substantial portion of parliament who were younger than 21. My favorite example is the best you could be elected between the ages of 12 and 21. There were some 40 members of parliament elected under the age of 21 between 1660 and 1689. One of my favorite examples of this phenomenon being important is a man named christopher monk, 13, whoman, the age of opened the impeachment trial against the earl of clarendon. In 1667. He was 13 years old and he opened the impeachment proceedings with a long speech. His father was pretty powerful. So sorry, father was his pretty powerful. Was there difference in gender . Certainly in terms of questions of power, there was a different of gender difference in gender. There were queens who had power that was inherited. And likewise for members of the nobility. But generally, only men were allowed in the house of lords, for example. You had a seat in the house of lords when you inherited the title, and that wouldve been at an average age of 21. But those were all men in the house of lords. So certainly in terms of power, there was a difference. But in terms of other kinds of legal capacity, the age limits were generally not as important for everybody, boy or girl. So as i said, when a twoyearold girl marries a threeyearold boy, that is happening for both of them. Ofterms of the question criminal capacity, etc. , there was a fouryearold girl who was among the imprisoned who was charged with witchcraft in salem in 1692. She was just as culpable as an eightyearold boy named john dean, who was charged with arson in england in 1629. So, what i am trying to say is, it was equal opportunity, both empowerment, and also in a strange way disempowerment. ,if a very young child is responsible for their actions, like i found an example of a sixmonthold child who was held responsible for killing herself by rolling into the fire when her parents had put her next to the fire to keep warm. That is, in some way, disempowerment. They are more vulnerable in a certain way. Host at six months. Ms. Brewer six months. Host let me go back to your earlier point. If you were convicted of a crime, say you were eight years old, did they have juvenile court, or did they consider you to be an adult . Ms. Brewer they had no such thing as juvenile court. In fact, age wasnt even a category considered in terms of responsibility. It certainly wasnt listed in the routine court papers. But i did find occasional would come up, often just to overrule it. In other words, i found examples of two young girls who were nine and 11, who were charged with stealing a beaver hat worth three pounds off somebodys head 1690s,on in the and the court determined they could see from the girls hands that they had been convicted of crimes before they had been burned on the thumb. For bike theft so they were determined to be old in crime but young in years and they were executed. Hanged. Host how do you research Something Like that . Where do you go . Ms. Brewer it took me many years. Documents,ding paper documents at old houses state , archives, archives at courthouses, the british archives for years, literally pulling out old boxes and unfolding packets of court cases , reading through them, not only on the local level but the state level, the national level, the level of empire, trying to figure out the answer to the questions. Host at what point in terms of the time periods did the beliefs or norms begin to change . Ms. Brewer i forgot i was also reading a lot of legal manuals. I was corresponding between the actual social records and the in law books. G you could tell from looking at the law books that the changes went handinhand with transitions from monarchy to democracy, or transition from a society where you were born into place, to one where government is made from the consent of the governed. Theorists, including political theorists began to argue that the consent should be based on the consent of the governed. It goes back to an argument about who should be able to consent. Go back to the fouryearold child. The boy signing his own labor contract, he does not understand what he is doing. If you allow really Young Children to consent, it becomes essentially a justification for monarchy, for no real consent at all. So the pattern of the changes there areked to two big revolutions in england to the17th century, and American Revolution, and the question of the consent of the governed is a central theme in all three of those revolutions. It becomes more clearly articulated. You can actually map the pattern of these legal changes to the civil war and American Revolution. Host was there public outcry parents, in particular the mothers, who may have seen what was happening to their often very Young Children . Ms. Brewer there is some outcry. Mostly the most obvious cases where i see it are, for example, when children are kidnapped. It wasnt actually illegal in england to kidnap children. I mean, it was very lightly punished when it was caught, and the authorities werent cracking down on it through most of the 17th century and into the 18th century. So, some of the most obvious cases where i find parents protesting is one chosen are sent on an errand and then kidnapped and sent to the colonies, for example. But a lot of other categories, it is hard to protest. I mean, so many of the times, when bad things happen to Young Children, the parents are also poor and not very powerful, and have no means of protesting. If the person is from a wealthy family, like christopher monk, who i mentioned before at the age of 17, he was having a rowdy party in london in 1671 with another duke he had by then and a anothe a duke policeman knocked on their door to tell them to be more quiet and stop. And christopher monk, when he came to the door, killed the policeman. He then went to his friend, the king, the next morning, and the king pardoned him and it led to riots in the street. But he was fine. He was safe. He didnt need a parent to protest for him. Most of the time, when a young child was executed or taken away to labor for somebody else, and their mark was put down, the parents in question might petition the court for some sort of change. I found those examples, but they didnt have the voice or authority to do much. Host i guess what i am hearing is that in many cases, these children were essentially slaves. They signed contracts at two or three, had to work until 25. They had not reached adulthood but were doing adult things. Ms. Brewer i think it can be compared to slavery. I certainly would say it is a temporary servitude or temporary slavery, if you want to use that word, on some level. Absolutely. Certainly, theres another point in common, which is in a certain way, they were also born into status. Not as terrible as that as enslaved africans and Indian Americans in say the 18th or 19th century, but certainly comparable in crucial ways. But on the other hand, if you look at the Court Records pretty closely, they did have a few more privileges that emerged clearly over time. And enslaved African American is usually did not have the right to appeal for abuse by a master for abuse,o a court wares and enslaved white child usually did. That kristi and, actually, was the crucial issue, that if they were a christian, they could swear an oath, and they could , he my master mistreated me tried to hit me, and they could get relief, wares and enslaved African American in particular were regularly silenced. It was a harsher system. Host were you able to glean any research into the dynamics of . Ithin the familys circle ms. Brewer dynamics within the Family Circle . Yes, there is a ton of information about that. One of the most interesting aspects that i realized, in a society where people were born to status and where land and power descends from eldest son to eldest son primarily, what that means is on the other children in the family were in a very dependent situation, including all the younger sons, because the eldest son usually got everything. In the case of virginia, usually most of the land. Enslaved laborers were attached to the land in a really creepy system. So all of the other children had to appeal to their older brother even when they were adults. They were dependent on him for resources to give them a plot of land to farm, or anything else. This system where birth status was central, where consent was not as important, actually meant a huge range of hierarchies for everyone in society. I could talk more about parents if you want to. Host please do. ,s. Brewer in terms of parents fathers definitely had more authority, and there were huge debates in the 17th century over religious focusing on religion about whether parents should be to their child in order to break their will and force obedience, or whether each child had within them the light should bed that nurtured and brought out in a positive way. A lot of these differences went by religion. So the quakers were very much focused on the light of god. Some are tens were more focused on breaking the will. Although some puritans were more focused on breaking the will. Although there was a lot of differentiation. I guess what i would say, within the family, those debates did happen, and fathers were clearly more powerful. But in a fundamental way, what we would now call custody, but parents had the right to decide for their children, was something that emerged gradually over the 17th and 18th centuries, especially after the American Revolution. And especially that the father had the right to make those decisions, not the mother. To sign a labor contract and to transfer authority. So the American Revolution was about the rights of human beings in certain ways, but especially about the rights of men, and fathers gained more authority of their children as a consequence. Sometimes this was good. It is conceptualized as in the best interest of the child but it is a pretty interesting transformation. Host when you teach this, what the university of maryland, what strikes you . What kind of questions do get from your students . Veryre going through a different part of america and its history. Ms. Brewer it is amazing, but they love this stuff. Because it is actually not that distant for them. Because in a certain way, we have extended childhood so far, they are all almost still seen as children in the sense that they are under 21 and they are not allowed to drink, for example, without an ide. Hear about the debates and struggles over what defined childhood and adulthood actually makes their own situation more understandable in this artificial way that we have extended childhood. In other words, they are all shocked to realize the ways in which i mean, they are also frustrated that they have been treated like children for so much longer, and it seems normal. So they get really excited reading this material. Host why were you excited to research this particular area of history . Ms. Brewer what got me into it in the first place were classes on political theory, where the early modern writers about democracy, like john locke, were talking about children constantly in their writings but yet none of the secondary sources dealt with matt at all. So i started asking, if children were the center and talked about continuously in early modern political theory, what did that mean for real children . I think at some level, i have always been interested in the question of how we distinguish who can consent and who cannot. This has implications far beyond the children. In the way that we think about the law. Who has the ability to have license and who doesnt is largely attributable or definable by how we define who can reason and who cant. Of course disabled people, intellectually disabled, people who are mad, people who are poor and dependent on others, this gets to the core of a lot of distinctions we make an on capacity in modern society. Host the book is titled, by birth or consent children, law, and the anglo American Revolution in authority. Holly brewer teaches history at the university of maryland. Thank you for being with us. Ms. Brewer you are welcome. Nice to meet you. Announcer youre watching American History tv. All weekend every weekend on history tv. , american h week history tvs reel america gives yoar