Figure 1.-- |
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We note several children who played notable roles in the 18th century or whose childhood experiences had a major impact on history. Many of these individuals are well known to history. Some of these individuals were royals or future public officals. Some like Mozart were prodigies. Other were ordinary boys like the boy Jenner inoculated with cowpox, but who thus had a huge impact on countless lives. We also note the Boston appretice boys and Cybil Shepard who played roles in the American Revolution.
Charles of Sweden: The Boy Conqueror. (Known as King Charles XII of Sweden.) A.D.
1699.
Almost all first-hand accounts of the Africab slave trade come from the slavers. In some cases slavers who turned against the trade, but in almost all cases European white men who participated in it. I know of no accounts by the Arabs involved, although they may exist. But what is especially lacking is accounts by the Africans who were enslaved. Most of those individuals are lost to history, in part because families were broken up and in part because they were illiterate and not permitted schooling once they arrived in the New World. One of the rare exceptions is Olaudah Equiano, a Nigerian boy, captured and enslaved when he was 11 years old. Equiano is an exception because he no only mananaged to buy his freedom, but educated himself and wrote an account of his experiences. There are a number of slave naratives, but Equiano's account is particularly important because it includes details on his capture and the Middle Passage, transport across the Atlantic to his new slave life. Other slave narratives are accounts of lives as slaves in the South, mostly during the 19th century. They are also important, but Equiano's book is generaly seen as the definitive account of the Middle Passage.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was probably the most aclaimed child prodigy of all time. He was born in Salzburg and educated along with his talented sister by his father Leopold who was concertmeister in the court orchestra of the archbishop of Salzburg and a celebrated violinist, composer, and authot of a stndard treatise on violin playing. Young Mozart's extrodinary precocity soon attracted attention. Five short piano pieces perormed at the age of 4 years still exist and are often played. Leopold beginning in 1762 when Mozart was 6 years old began taking the boy and his sister on European tours where there skills were accalimed. Mozart performed on the clavier, violin, and organ. He composed many works as a child. At the time it was common to dress boys, once breeched, as minature adults. Thus Mozart's clothes were small editions of contemporary court fashion.
Christopher Seider (alternatively Snider) was born in Boston (1758). He would be the first American Patriot killed in the escalating political strife that would eventually lead to the American Revolution. He was born into a family of relatively poor German immigrants. He became one of the Liberty Boys, Boston children caught up in the increasinly anti-British feeling sweeping Boston under British military occupation. Christopher joined a mob demonstrating in front of the home of Ebenezer Richardson located in Boston's North End. Richardson was unpopular because he was he worked a British customs agent. He had tried to disperse a protest in front of the shop of British Loyalist Theophilius Lillie. The unruly mob began throwing stones which broke Richardson's windows and struck his wife. Richardson fired a gun into the crowd to scare them away, apparently without aiming. His bullet struck 11-year old Christopher, severly wounding him in the arm and the chest. He died that evening (February 22, 1770. Samuel Adams turned his death into a major issued. He organize a funeral which became a major anti-British event. Over 2,000 outraged Bostonians attended to pay their respects to Christopher. He was buried in Granary Burying Ground--the first American Patriot to die. His killing fed into the calderon of Boston's already incenderay political atmosphere. And only a few days later, the victims of the Boston Massacre (March 5) were laid to rest near Christopher. Seider's killing and large public funeral fueled public outrage that reached a peak in the Boston Massacre eleven days later. Richardson was convicted of murder that spring, but then received a royal pardon and a new job within the customs service, on the grounds that he had acted in self-defense. This became a major American grievance against the British government. Until these deaths, the issues between the American colonists and the British were amenable to political sollution. Beginning with Christopher's deat, this possobility began to slip away.
Tensions between the American colonists develop3ed during the early 1760s. The English had stationed troops in Boston to keep order, which only caused more resentment. British troops on March 5, 1770, killed five men and wounded six others. The Patriots referred to this as the 'Boston Massacre' which became one of the major steps leading to the Revolution. Paul Revere and other patriot publicists used the Boston Massacre to intensify anti-British feeling. Unlike Patriot portrayals, the event was not an organized military actions against peaceful Boton citizens. The British soldiers, not nearly as well organized as portryed, faced an unruly mob which was taunting an isolated sentry, pelting him with rocks and slushly snowballs. Much of the mob was boys and youths, infact unruly teenagers. Many were apretices who were convinced that a Revolution would mean the end of their apreticeships. Other soldiers came to the support of the sentry. No one knows precisely what happened next, except that the British finally fired into the mob. Given that what became known as the Boston Massacre was a major milestone on the road to Revolution, it can be seen that boys played a major role in bringing it on. Interestingly, it is future president John Adams, perhaps the man after Washington most responsible for the success of the Revolution, defended the soldiers in a subsequent trial.
Paul Revere was not the only one to conduct a "midnight ride" to warn Patriots that the British were coming. Cybil Shepard made a much longer ride and became known as the Danbury Angel.
Andrew Jackson was the 7th Presisdent of the United States and the first real populist and frontier President. The Revolutionary War in the South was more of a Civil War and incredibly brutal. There were attrocities against both prisoners and civilians, including women and children. Jackson as a boy had seen most of his family die at the hands of the British during the Revoluntionary War. At the age of 13, during 1780, he and his brother who was 12 took part in a skirmish against
the British. Many children were involved in the War. Andy and his brother were not drummer boys, but actual commbatents with muskets. He and his brother Robert was captured after the squirmish at a house where theyhad stopped for shelter. A British officer ordered him to polish his boots. Andrew refused and the officer struck him with his saber when Andrew was impudent. He was scarred, but deflected the blow. His brother was not so lucky. He received a severe gash to his head. He eventually died when it became infected. It is one of the great ironies of American history that this young Irish-American boy would as an adult successfuly defeat a highly professiinal superior British military force at New Orleans and thus doom Britain's effort play a major role on the North American continent. (At the time, control of the mouth of the Mississippi would have enable the British to have played a major role in the ntire Mississippi Valley.) Andrew despite his age was held by the British in
auful conditions. When he was released, all the members of his immediate family has died and young Andrew was left to face the open American frontier on his own.
John Quincy Adams was the sixth president of the United States, born the same year as Andy Jackson, but in very different circumstances. He was the first son of a president to be elected to the office himself. Interestingly, Adams may have made a greater contribution to the United States as President Monroe's Secretary of State than as president. John Quincy Adams in many respects paralleled the career as well as the
temperament and viewpoints of his illustrious father. Less well known is the role he played as a boy during th Revolutionary war.
Some scholars believe that the man most responsible for the success of the American Revolution, other than George
Washington, was John Quincey's father John Adams. One of Adam's major accomplishments was helping Benjamin Franklin
convince the French to assisst the Americans in the Revolutionary War. Adams joined Franklin in Paris during 1778?,
brininging John Quincey because of his linguistic accomplishments. John Quincey wa only about 11 years olds at the time. King
Louis XV finally agreed, but appointed an ambassador who could not speak word of English. It was John Quincey who taught
him English on the boat trip back to America. French assistance was of course critical in winning the Revolution. John Quincey
was to follow his father after the Revolution to another diplomatic post--this ime St. Petrsburg, Russia at the age of 14.
Sally Hemings, who was first called Sarah, was the daughter of Elizabeth (Betty) Hemings and, allegedly, John Wayles, Thomas Jefferson's father-in-law. Thomas Jefferson inherited inherited Sally and her mother as part of the Wayles estate in 1774. The two by 1776 were living on Monticello. Sally as a child was probably a "nurse"
to Jefferson's daughter Mary. Slave girls from 6-8 years of age were commonly used as childminders and assistants to head nurses on plantations. They might also be assigned as playmates for the white children. Jefferson's wife died in 17?? She asked him never to remarry, primarily so that their daughter Mary would never have a stepmother. Jefferson was appointed Ambassador to France in 17??.
Once there he asked Mary to Join him, which she did in 1787, accompanied by Sally. At the time, Sally was 14 and Mary 8 years olsd. It was in Paris that the relationship between Jefferson and Sally is believed to have begun. Sally could have remained in Parius as a free person, but Jefferson promissed her that he would ensure that she lived in comfort on Monticello and free her children, if she returned. Modern tests appear to indicate that Jefferson fathered Sally's youngest son. Some had thought he fathered Thomas Woodson, Sally's oldest son. The science of DNA evidence is very complicated, but clearly there was an intimate relationship between Jefferson and Sally. This is a good example of the evils of the slave system. In this case the relationship was surely consentual, but Sally was a child and a slave and thus her consent in the relationship has to be viewed in terms of not only her age, but the slave system itself. Of course there were countless such relationshps between slave girls and their masters and most were neither consentual or loving. In many cases violence was used. Not only ones this highlight the evils of the slavery, but it points out how extesively the lives of slaves and masters were intertwined. In many cases the slaves were the sons and daughters and other relatives of their masters. Some fathers sent their slave off-spring north to live as free persons. Many did not.
James Phipps was the English boy that Edward Jenner (1749-1823)innoculated against cowpox (1796). We do not know what happened to James in his future life, but we do know that this was the first known use of innoculation to prevent disease. Smallpox at the time was a virulent disease which ravaged man kind. Many Europeans who did not die of the disease were marked with scared faces. Native Americans who had no resistance to the disease were devestated when Europeans brought the disease to the New World. The principle was to introduced dead or weakened weakened disease bodies to the individual to help the person's imune system the ability to deal with the disease. Cowpox was a less virulent form of the disease, but helped the system build a resistance to smallpox. The technique of innoculation or vaccination was used to combat many other diseases. It led to a great debate when scintists began to work on a polio vaccine after that disease became a huge problem in the 20th century, crippling thouands of children annually. Sabibe worked on a polio vaccine. Jinas Salk argued, however, that polio was to virulent for this approach.
Van Rensselaer of Resselaerswyck: The Boy Patroon. (Afterward Major-General, and
Lieutenant-Governor of the State of New York A.D. 1777.
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