Third Great Awakening

The Third Great Awakening was a period in American history from 1886 to 1908. It is also called the Missionary Awakening.

The Awakening began with the Haymarket Riot and the student missionary movement, rose with agrarian protest and labor violence, and climaxed in the revivalist candidacy of William Jennings Bryan in 1896. Gilded Age realism came under harsh attack from trust-blasting muckrakers, Billy Sunday evangelicals, "new woman" feminists, and chautauqua dreamers. After radicalizing and splitting the Progressive movement, the passion cooled when William Howard Taft succeeded Theodore Roosevelt in the White House.

Age Location in History:

• The Gilded Generation was entering elderhood. As young zealots prepared for the 1898 invasion of Cuba, virtually all of America's aging Gilded luminaries urged peace and caution. The young didn't listen to them, and chose to remember the Maine instead of Gettysburg.
• The Progressive Generation was entering midlife. After spending half their lives adapting to a Gilded-built world, the Progressives started taking cues from the young.
• The Missionary Generation was coming of age. "Onward Christian soldiers, rip and tear and smite/Let the gentle Jesus bless your dynamite" sang the Wobblies in 1905.
• The Lost Generation was being born. Children of the 1890s were America's most tough-minded ever, growing up fast amid gangs, drugs, saloons, big-city immigration, and an emotional climate ranging with evangelical fervor and social reform.