Compromise Generation

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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 1975–1985
Culture Wars	1980s–present
Boomerang Generation Generation Y Internet Generation New Silent Generation	1977–1986 1979–1999 1988–1999 2000–2020

The Compromise Generation is that name given to the generation of Americans born from 1767 to 1791 by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book Generations. As Henry Clay later recalled, this generation grew up "rocked in the cradle of the Revolution" as they watched brave adults struggle and triumph. Compliantly coming of age, they offered a new erudition, expertise, and romantic sensibility to their heroic elders' Age of Improvement. As young adults, they became what historian Matthew Cremson calls "the administrative founding fathers" and soldiered a Second War for Independence whose glory could never compare with the first. In midlife, they mentored populist movements, fretted over slavery and Indian removal, and presided over the Compromise of 1850 that reflected their irresolution. As elders during the American Civil War, they feared that their "postheroic" mission had failed and that the United States might not outlive them.

The Compromisers' typical grandparents were of the Awakening Generation. Their parents were of the Liberty Generation and Republican Generation. Their children were of the Transcendental Generation and Gilded Generation; their typical grandchildren were of the Progressive Generation.

Altogether, about 4.2 million Americans were born from 1767 to 1791. 10 percent were immigrants and 15 percent were slaves at any point in their lives.

[edit] Members

Sample Compromisers with birth and death dates as this generation is fully ancestral include the following:

1767 Denmark Vesey (1822)
c. 1768 Tecumseh (1813)
1768 Dolley Madison (1849)
1769 DeWitt Clinton (1828)
1773 John Randolph of Roanoke (1833)
1774 Meriwether Lewis (1809)
1775 Francis Cabot Lowell (1817)
1777 Roger Taney (1864)
1777 Henry Clay (1852)
1780 William Ellery Channing (1842)
1782 Daniel Webster (1852)
1782 John C. Calhoun (1850)
1783 Washington Irving (1859)
1785 John Audubon (1851) (immigrant)
1786 Davy Crockett (1836)
1786 Winfield Scott (1866)
1787 Emma Willard (1870)
1788 Sarah Hale (1879)
1789 James Fenimore Cooper (1851)
1791 Samuel F. B. Morse (1872)

The Compromisers had seven U.S. Presidents:

1767 Andrew Jackson, 1829-1837 (1845)
1767 John Quincy Adams, 1825-1829 (1848)
1773 William Henry Harrison, 1841 (1841)
1782 Martin Van Buren, 1837-1841 (1862)
1784 Zachary Taylor, 1849-1850 (1850)
1790 John Tyler, 1841-1845 (1862)
1791 James Buchanan, 1857-1861 (1868)

The Compromisers had a plurality in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1813 to 1835, a plurality in the U.S. Senate from 1813 to 1841, and a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1829 to 1860.

The cultural endowments of the Compromisers include the following: