>> for those who have been knocked down, counted out, not down and left behind -- this is your campaign. >> the presidential campaign and caucuses continue to stay in six states including idaho, michigan, mississippi, north dakota, and washington. what's our campaign 2020 coverage tuesday evening live on c-span, c-span.org, or listen wherever you are on the free c-span radio app. next, author holly brower discusses the lives of children during the colonial period, including their legal status and treatment by the justice system. this interview was recorded at the annual historical association meeting. host: holly brower is a professed number of history at the university of maryland and she is also the author of the

book by birth or consent. appreciate you being with us here on c-span three. let me begin with a broad question and you can take it in any direction. how were children viewed in the 16th century based on 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 five-year-old 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 eight-year-old executed for arson. marrying asdren

early as two or in a fundamental three. 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: the life expectancy was what? ms. brewer: about 40. it was changing rapidly at this point. that is deceptive. 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 wasn't unusual to live to age 60 or 70. host: was there a difference in that in the colonies versus great britain?

ms. brewer: 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, that life expectancy was shorter and the colonies, at least initially just because conditions were so hard and the threat of diseases like malaria. host: if we looked at the british parliament in the 1660's and 1670's, what would we have seen? ms. brewer: a substantial portion of parliament that is younger than 21. my favorite example is -- you could be elected between ages 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, age 13, opened the impeachment trial against the earl of clarendon. he was 13 years old and he opened the impeachment proceedings with a long speech. his father was pretty powerful. host: was there difference in gender? ms. brewer: yes and no. certainly in terms of questions of power. not completely, there were queens who had power that was inherited. and likewise for members of the nobility. but certainly generally only men were allowed in the house of

lords. you had a seat in the house of lords when you inherited the title, and that would've been at and 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. when a two-year-old girl marries a three-year-old boy, that is happening for both of them and in terms of criminal capacity, there was a four-year-old girl who was among the imprisoned who was charged with witchcraft in salem in 1692. she was just as culpable as an eight-year-old boy named john who was charged with arson in england in 1629.

so what i'm trying to say is, it was equal opportunity, both empowerment and in a strange way disempowerment. if a child is responsible for their actions, i found an example of a six-month-old 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. why don't we go back to your early -- host: if you were convicted of a crime, say you were eight years old, did they have juvenile court or were you considered an adult? ms. brewer: no such thing as juvenile court. in fact, age was not even a category considered in terms of responsibility. it certainly was not listed in routine court papers.

but i did find occasional to young girls who were nine and 11 who were charged stealing a beaver hat off someone's head in london in the 16 90's on 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. hank. hanged. host: how do you research something like that? where do you go? ms. brewer: state archives, archives at courthouses, the british archives for years, literally pulling out old boxes

and unfolding packets of court cases on the local and state level and 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 was also reading a lot of legal manuals. i was corresponding between the actual social records and the high theorizing and mile back. what you can tell from looking at the law books is changes went hand-in-hand with transitions from monarchy to democracy, or from a society where you are born into a place into one where government is made from the consent of the governed. theorist, including political theorists began to argue. --t the consent should be on

an argument about who should be able to consent. go back to the four-year-old 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 can be linked to two big revolutions in england in the 17th century and the american revolution and to the question of the consent of the governed is a central theme in all three. it becomes more clearly articulated. you can actually map the pattern to the civil war and american revolution. host: was there public outcry from the parents, the mothers who saw what was happening to their young children? ms. brewer: there is some outcry, mostly it comes, the

most obvious cases are when children are kidnapped. it was not actually illegal in england to kidnap children. it was lightly punished when caught and authorities were not cracking down on it through most of the 17th century and into the 18th century. some of the most obvious cases where i find parents protest is when children 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. so many times when bad things happen to young children, the parents are also poor and have no means of protesting. if the person is from a wealthy family like christopher monk who i mentioned before, at age 17 he was having a rowdy party in london in 1671 and he had become

a duke and a policeman knocked on their door and told them to be more quiet. christopher monk killed the policeman and 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 did not need his parents to protest for him. but most of the time when a young child was executed or taken away to labor for someone else and their mark was put down, the parents in question might petition the court for some sort of change. i found examples, but there were they did not have the type of voice or authority to do much. host: i am hearing that in many cases the children were essentially slaves.

they signed contract at two or three and they 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 would certainly say it is temporary servitude or temporary slavery on some level. absolutely. there is another point in common in a certain way they were also born into status. not as terrible as that as enslaved african and indian americans in the 18th or 19th century, but comparable in crucial ways. on the other hand, if you look at the court records, they had a few more privileges. emerged clearly over time. enslaved african americans did not have the right to appeal to a court for abuse by a master.

whereas and enslaved white child usually did. if they were christian, a crucial issue if they were , christian, they could swear an oath and say, my master is mistreating me, he tried to give me with an ax, whatever. they could usually get relief, where enslaved african americans were legally silenced. it was a harsher system. host: were you able to glean any research into the dynamics of within the family circle? ms. brewer: 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, what that means --that all of the children the oldest son got everything, virginia, most of the land and enslaved laborers were attached to the land, so all of the other children had to appeal to their older brother, even as adults, they were dependent on him for resources to give them land to farm or anything else. so this system where birth status was central, where consent was important, meant a huge range of hierarchy for everyone in society. i could talk more about parents if you want to. in terms of parents, fathers definitely had more authority

and there were huge debates on religion whether parents should beat their child to break their will and force obedience, or whether each child had within them the light of god and that should be nurtured and brought out in a positive way. a lot of these differences went by religion. the quakers were very much focused on the light of god. some puritans were more focused on breaking the will. although there was a lot of differentiation. so i would say within the family , those debates did happen, fathers were clearly more powerful but in a fundamental way, what we would now call custody, that parents had the right to decide for their children was something that

emerged gradually over the 17th and 18th centuries after the , american revolution, especially that the father has the right to make 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 gaining more authority of their children. sometimes this was good. it is conceptualized as in the best interest of the child but it is an interesting transformation. host: when you teach this, what strikes you? what kind of questions do you get from your students? you are going back to a very different part of america. ms. brewer: it is amazing, but strikes you? they love this stuff. it is 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 almost all still seen -- they are under 21 and they are not allowed to drink, for example. so to hear about the debates and struggle over what to find childhood and adulthood actually makes their own situation more understandable in this artificial way we have extended childhood. in other words, they are all shocked to realize the ways in which -- i mean, they are all so frustrated they've been treated like children for so much longer. so they get really excited reading this material. host: why are 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 none of the secondary sources with that all. so i started asking, if children were the center and talked about continuously in modern political theory, what did that mean for real children? i think we are interested in the questions about who can consent and who cannot and this has implications far beyond children in the way we think about the law. who has the ability to have rights and who doesn't is largely definable by how we define who can reason and who can't. disabled people, intellectually disabled, people who are poor -- mad, people who are poor and dependent on others, this gets to the core of a lot of

distinctions we make an capacity in modern society. host: the book is titled, by birth or consent: children, law, and the anglo american revolution in authority. holly brewer, thank you for being with us. ms. brewer: you are welcome. nice to meet you. ♪ ♪ announcer: next on the

presidency, abraham lincoln scholar harold holzer revisits the 16th president's second inaugural address delivered six -- on march 4, 1865, just six weeks before his assassination and generally considered to be one of the most iconic speeches in american history. the new york historical society hosted the event. >> we are honored to welcome harold holzer back.