Progressive Generation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article lacks information on the notability (importance) of the subject matter.
Please help improve this article by providing context for a general audience, especially in the lead section. This article has been tagged since December 2006. (help, talk)

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
Any material not supported by sources may be challenged and removed at any time. This article has been tagged since December 2006.

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
^Silent Generation Beat Generation Baby Boomers Generation Jones	1925–1942 fl. 1950s-1960s *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 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.

Despite being overshadowed by Reconstruction, the Progressives did retain a powerful civic-minded instinct. Later in life they provide the turn of the century backbone for an era today called Progressive Era America.

[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: