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Gilded Generation

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American Generations
Term Period
Awakening Generation 1701–1723
First Great Awakening 1730–1740
Liberty Generation
Republican Generation
Compromise Generation 		1724–1741
1742–1766
1767–1791
Second Great Awakening 1790–1840
Transcendentalist Generation
Transcendental Generation
Abolitionist Generation
Gilded Generation
Progressive Generation 		1789–1819
1792–1821
1819–1842
1822–1842
1843–1859
Third Great Awakening aka Missionary 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 aka American High 1929–1956
Silent Generation
Baby boomer>Baby Boomers
Beat Generation
Generation Jones 		1925–1945
1946–1964
1948–1962
1954–1965
Consciousness Revolution 1964–1984
Baby Busters
Generation X
MTV Generation
1958–1968
1961–1981
1975–1985
Culture Wars 1984–2005
Boomerang Generation
Generation Y
Internet generation
New Silent Generation 		1981–1986
1977–2003
1986–1999
2001–

The Gilded Generation is the name coined by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book Generations for the generation of Americans born from 1822 to 1842. This generation included the California Gold Rush Forty-niners who made circa-1850 San Francisco the most monogenerational city ever seen in the United States and the most anarchic, with no families or laws, just vigilante justice enforced by hangings. It includes most of the veterans of the American Civil War on both sides. It lent its name to the Gilded Age.

This generation lived a hardscrabble childhood around parents distracted by the Second Great Awakening's spiritual upheavals. They came of age amid rising national tempers, torrential immigration, commercialism, Know Nothing politics, and declining college enrollments. As young adults, many pursued fortunes in frontier boom towns or as fledgling "robber barons". Their Lincoln Shouters and Johnny Rebs rode eagerly into a Civil War that left them decimated, Confederates especially. Having learned to detest moral zealotry, their midlife Presidents and industrialists put their stock in Darwinian economics, Boss Tweed politics, Victorian prudery, and Carnegie's Law of Competition. As elders, they landed on the "industrial scrap heap" of an urbanizing economy that was harsh to most old people.

Altogether, there were about 17 million Americans born between 1822 and 1842. 28 percent were immigrants and 10 percent were slaves at some point in their lives.

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

This generation is fully ancestral; the last member of the Gilded Generation, the American Betsy Baker, died on October 24, 1955.

Members

Sample members of the Gilded Generation with birth and death dates include:

The Gilded Generation had six U.S. Presidents:

The Gilded Generation held a plurality in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1869 to 1893, a plurality in the U.S. Senate from 1873 to 1903, and a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1890 to 1910.

Cultural endowments

Foreign peers

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