Compromise Generation
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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 Great Compromise 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.
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 (1845)
- 1767 John Quincy Adams (1848)
- 1773 William Henry Harrison (1841)
- 1782 Martin Van Buren (1862)
- 1784 Zachary Taylor (1850)
- 1790 John Tyler (1862)
- 1791 James Buchanan (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.
Prominent non-U.S. peers of the Compromisers include Napoleon Bonaparte, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, Ludwig van Beethoven, Sir Walter Scott, and Simón Bolívar.
The cultural endowments of the Compromisers include the following:
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving
- The American Democrat
- The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
- "The Star-Spangled Banner", song, Francis Scott Key
- Married or Single?, Catherine Maria Sedgwick
- A Visit from St. Nicholas, Clement Clarke Moore
- The Old Oaken Bucket, Samuel Woodworth
- The First Forty Years of Washington Society, Margaret Bayard Smith
- The Value and Importance of Legal Studies, Joseph Story
| Preceded by: Republican Generation 1724 - 1741 | American Generations 1767 - 1791 | Succeeded by: Transcendental Generation 1767 - 1791 |