Transcendental Generation

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U.S. Generations
* = dates disputed, ^ = Strauss and Howe
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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 Transcendental Generation is the name given by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book Generations for that generation of Americans born between 1792 and 1821. The proud offspring of a secular new nation, this generation included the first children to be portraited (and named at birth) as individuals. Coming of age as evangelists, reformers, and campus rioters, they triggered the Second Great Awakening, a spiritual paroxysm across the nation. As crusading young adults, their divergent inner visions exacerbated sectional divisions. Entering midlife, graying abolitionists and Southerners spurned compromise and led the nation into the American Civil War, their zeal fired by the moral pronouncements of an aging clergy. The victors achieved emancipation but were blocked from imposing a peace as punishing as the old radicals would like to have wished. In elderhood, their feminists and poets (many with flowing beards) became unyielding expositors of truth and justice.

The Transcendentals' typical grandparents were of the Liberty Generation. Their parents were of the Republican Generation and Compromise Generation. Their children were of the Gilded Generation and Progressive Generation and their typical grandchildren were of the Missionary Generation.

Altogether, there were about 11 million Americans born from 1792 to 1821. 20 percent were immigrants and 13 percent were slaves at any point in their lives.

[edit] Members

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

The Transcendentals had five U.S. Presidents:

The Transcendentals held a plurality in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1835 to 1869, a plurality in the U.S. Senate from 1841 to 1873, and the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1861 to 1889.

Sample cultural endowments of the Transcendentals include the following:

[edit] Foreign Peers

[edit] See also

Preceded by
Compromise Generation
1767 – 1791		 Transcendental Generation
1792 – 1821		 Succeeded by
Gilded Generation
1822 – 1842
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