Compromise Generation

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U.S. Generations * = dates disputed, ^ = Strauss and Howe This box: view • talk • edit
Term	Period
^Puritan Generation	1588–1617
Puritan Awakening	1621–1649
^Cavalier Generation ^Glorious Generation ^Enlightenment Generation ^Awakening Generation	1618-1648 1648-1673 1674-1700 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 ^Gilded Generation ^Progressive Generation	1789–1819 1792–1821 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	1918-1929
Beat Generation Silent Generation Baby Boomers Generation Jones	fl. 1950s-1960s 1925–1945 *1940s-1960s 1954–1965
Consciousness Revolution	1964–1984
Generation X ^13th Generation MTV Generation Boomerang Generation	*1960s–1980s 1961-1981 1974–1985 1977–1986
Culture Wars	1980s–present
Generation Y ^Millennial Generation Echo Boom Generation Internet Generation ^New Silent Generation	1970s–1990s 1982-2000 1982–1995 1994–2001 1990s or 2000s-?

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: