Progressive Generation

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American Generations This box: view • talk • edit
Term	Period
Awakening Generation	1701–1723
First Great Awakening	1727–1746
Liberty Generation Republican Generation Compromise Generation	1724–1741 1742–1766 1767–1791
Second Great Awakening	1790–1844
Transcendentalist Generation Transcendental Generation Abolitionist Generation Gilded Generation Progressive Generation	1789–1819 1792–1821 1819–1842 1822–1842 1843–1859
Third Great Awakening	1886–1908
Missionary Generation Lost Generation Interbellum Generation G.I. Generation Greatest Generation	1860–1882 1883–1900 1900–1910 1900–1924 1911–1924
Jazz Age	1929–1956
Silent Generation Baby Boomers Beat Generation Generation Jones	1925–1945 1946–1964 1948–1962 1954–1962
Consciousness Revolution	1964–1984
Baby Busters Generation X MTV Generation	1958–1968 1963–1978 1975–1984
Culture Wars	1980s–present
Boomerang Generation Generation Y Internet Generation New Silent Generation	1977–1986 1979–1999 1988–1999 2000–2020

The Progressive Generation is a name coined by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book Generations for that generation of Americans born from 1843 to 1859. The Progressives were caught in an odd warp of history, as the American Civil War saeculum did not have a Hero (or Civic) archetype.

The Progressives spent their childhood shell-shocked by sectionalism and the American Civil War. Overawed by older "bloody-shirt" veterans, they came of age cautiously, pursuing refinement and expertise more than power. In the shadow of Reconstruction, they earned their reputation as well-behaved professors and lawyers, calibrators and specialists, civil servants and administrators. In midlife, their mild commitment to social melioration was whipsawed by the passions of youth. They matured into America's genteel yet juvenating Rough Riders in the era of Sigmund Freud's "talking cure" and late-Victorian sentimentality. After busting trusts and achieving progressive procedural reforms, their elders continued to urge tolerance on less conciliatory juniors.

Altogether, there were about 22 million Americans born from 1843 to 1859. 27% of them were immigrants and 9% were slaves at any point in their lives.

The Progressives' typical grandparents were of the Compromise Generation. Their parents were of the Transcendental Generation and Gilded Generation. Their children were of the Missionary Generation and Lost Generation; their typical grandchildren were of the G.I. Generation.

[edit] Members

A listing of sample Progressives includes the following, with birth and death dates as this generation is fully ancestral:

1843 Henry James (1916)
1843 Aaron Montgomery Ward (1913)
1844 Henry Heinz (1919)
1845 Mary Cassatt (1926)
1846 George Westinghouse (1914)
1846 Carry Nation (1911)
1847 Thomas Edison (1931)
1847 "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman (1918)
1849 Alexander Graham Bell (1922) (immigrant)
1849 Luther Burbank (1926)
1849 Crazy Horse (1877)
1849 George Bird Grinnell (1938)
1850 Samuel Gompers (1924) (immigrant)
1854 Tom L. Johnson (1911)
1854 John Philip Sousa (1932)
1855 Percival Lowell (1916)
1855 Eugene V. Debs (1926)
1855 Robert M. La Follette, Sr. (1925)
1856 Booker T. Washington (1915)
1856 Louis Brandeis (1941)
1856 Robert E. Peary (1920)
1856 Frederick Winslow Taylor (1915)
1857 Ida Tarbell (1944)
1857 Nikola Tesla (1943) (immigrant)
1857 Clarence Darrow (1938)
1859 John Dewey (1952)

The Progressives had four U.S. Presidents:

1843 William McKinley, 1897-1901 (1901)
1856 Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1921 (1924)
1857 William Howard Taft, 1909-1913 (1930)
1858 Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-1909 (1919)

They held a plurality in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1893 to 1909, a plurality in the U.S. Senate from 1903 to 1917, and a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1911 to 1923.

Sample cultural endowments of the Progressives include the following: