Republican Generation

The Republican Generation is the name given to that generation of Americans born from 1742 to 1766 by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book Generations. They grew up as the precious object of adult protection during the French and Indian Wars, an era of rising crime and social disorder. They came of age highly regarded for their secular optimism and spirit of cooperation. As young adults, they achieved glory as soldiers in the American Revolutionary War, brilliance as scientists, order as civic planners, and epic success as state-crafters. Trusted by elders and aware of their own role in history, they led the campaign to ratify the United States Constitution and filled all the early cabinet posts. In midlife, they built canals and acquired territories, while their orderly Federalist and rational Republican leaders made America a "workshop of liberty". As elders, they chafed at passionate youths bent on repudiating much of what they had built.

The Republicans' typical grandparents were of the Enlightenment Generation. Their parents were of the Awakening Generation and Liberty Generation. Their children were of the Compromise Generation and Transcendental Generation and their typical grandchildren were of the Gilded Generation.

Altogether, about 2.1 million Americans were born from 1742 to 1766. 17 percent were immigrants and 17 percent were slaves at any point in their lives.

A list of sample Republicans includes the following, with birth and death dates as this generation is fully ancestral:

• 1742 Nathanael Greene (1786)
• 1744 Abigail Adams (1818)
• 1745 John Jay (1829)
• 1745 Benjamin Rush (1813)
• 1747 John Paul Jones (U.S. Navy captain, not the Led Zeppelin bassist) (1792) (immigrant)
• 1750 Kunta Kinte (c. 1815) (immigrant)
• 1752 Gouverneur Morris (1816)
• 1752 Timothy Dwight (1817)
• 1754 Pierre L'Enfant (1825) (immigrant)
• 1754 Joel Barlow (1812)
• 1754 "Molly Pitcher" (1832)
• 1755 Nathan Hale (1776}
• 1755 John Marshall (1835)
• 1757 Alexander Hamilton (1804) (immigrant)
• 1758 Noah Webster (1843)
• 1761 Albert Gallatin (1849) (immigrant)
• 1763 John Jacob Astor (1848) (immigrant)
• 1765 Robert Fulton (1815)
• 1765 Eli Whitney (1825)
• 1766 Sam Wilson (1854)

The Republicans had three U.S. Presidents: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. They held a plurality in the House of Representatives from 1789 to 1813, a majority of the U.S. Senate from 1789 to 1813, and a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1791 to 1826. In addition, John Jay (1778-1779), Thomas Mifflin (1783-1784), and Cyrus Griffin (1788-1789) held the Presidency of the Continental Congress before the Constitution was ratified.

Prominent foreign-born peers of the Republicans include Marie Antoinette, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Marquis de Lafayette, Maximilien Robespierre, and Horatio Nelson.

Sample cultural endowments of the Republicans include the following:

• United States Declaration of Independence
• United States Constitution
• Plan for the Virginia state capitol, Thomas Jefferson
• The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
• American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster
• Modern Chivalry, Hugh Henry Brackenridge
• The Columbiad, Joel Barlow
• Plans for Washington, D.C, Pierre L'Enfant
• The Battle of Bunker Hill, painting, John Trumbull
• The Conquest of Canaan, Timothy Dwight