bibed from the
parents by the smallest children. On the Whig side, patriotic mothers in
New England filled their sons with zeal for the cause of freedom and
with hatred of the tyranny of the Crown; while in the more southern
colonies the partisanship of the little ones was no less intense. "From
the constant topic of the present conversation," wrote the Rev. John J.
Zubly (a Swiss clergyman settled in South Carolina and Georgia), in an
address to the Earl of Dartmouth in seventeen hundred and
seventy-five,--"from the constant topic of the present conversation,
every child unborn will be impressed with the notion--it is slavery to
be bound at the will of another 'in all things whatsoever.' Every
mother's milk will convey a detestation of this maxim. Were your
lordship in America, you might see little ones acquainted with the word
of command before they can distinctly speak, and shouldering of a gun
before they are well able to walk."[92-A]

The children of the Tories had also their part in the struggle. To some
the property of parents was made over, to save it from confiscation in
the event of the success of the American cause. To others came the
bitterness of separation from parents, when they were sent across the
sea to unknown relatives; while again some faint manuscript record tells
of a motherless child brought from a comfortable home, no longer
tenable, to whatever quarters could be found within the British lines.
Fortunately, children usually adapt themselves easily to changed
conditions, and in the novelty and excitement of the life around them,
it is probable they soon forgot the luxuries of dolls and hobby-horses,
toy-books and drums, of former days.

In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania the sentiment of the period was
expressed in two or three editions of "The New England Primer." Already
in 1770 one had appeared containing as frontispiece a poor wood-cut of
John Hancock. In 1775 the enthusiasm over the appointment of George
Washington as commander-in-chief brought out another edition of the A B
C book with the same picture labelled "General Washington." The custom
of making one cut do duty in several representations was so well
understood that this method of introducing George Washington to the
infant reader naturally escaped remark.

Another primer appeared four years later, which was advertised by
Walters and Norman in the "Pennsylvania Evening Post" as "adorned with a
beautiful head of George Washington