JIGSAW GENS
Cradled Explorers — The Common Sense Microgeneration
As the youngest Goodpublicans and the oldest Madisonians, this cusp furthered American Revolutionary goals with greater context and foresight than their elders
Every generation has members who are critical of the generations who came before them. On the flip side, generations living out their youth don’t always understand why certain decisions were made in the past — whether it was 10 years ago…or 100 years earlier.
But each of these cohorts has reacted to the judgment of those who were in power when that generation’s own parents and grandparents were young people themselves. Those of us alive today can identify antiquated behavior from past centuries…however, for many of the folks alive back then, ignorance and deception might have been clouding their acuity.
My “Jigsaw Gens” series is an attempt to show the ways in which American progress slogged forward — however slowly it ended up being — as historical figures took greater ownership over their power. To facilitate this storytelling, I’ve traced 27 categories of generational labeling based on America’s complex history:
Parliamentarians | Concentrics | Inflectors
Kingdomites | Cavaliers | Magnas
Glory Warriors | Lumineers | Enlightening Rods
Septennials | Liberty Lords | Goodpublicans
Madisonians | Unimpressionists | Transcendentals
Redeemers | Golden Renegades | Stowegressives
Missionaries | Hemingrebels | GI-Gens
Traditionalists | Baby Boomers | GenXers
Millennials | Zoomers | Alphas
The parameters for generational labels are hardly clear-cut. Major events that shaped the United States were happening as representatives from multiple decades contributed to this country’s narrative.
That’s why it’s helpful to recognize “microgenerations” — where two adjacent generations overlap. Lines can be blurred between the “cusp” along which the youngest members of one generation merge with the eldest members of the subsequent generation.
As I continue to map out these “cusps,” I’ve outlined the temporal bridge crossed by Americans who were born in the late-1750s and the early-1760s. I have christened them as the Cradled Explorers.
Who They Are
Cradled Explorers were born approximately between 1759 to 1763 — give or take a couple of years on either end. This is the cusp shared by the youngest Goodpublicans and the oldest Madisonians. They were described by historians William Strauss and Neil Howe as having been “rocked in the cradle of the American Revolution,” being the first microgeneration born as the French and Indian Wars were concluding.
Kids of Pontiac’s War, their adolescence overlapped with the American Revolutionary War. Making their way through adulthood during George Washington’s presidency, they endured the Cherokee-American Wars and the Northwest Indian War. A bulk of their societal power was realized during the “Era of Good Feelings.”
Cradled Explorers were alive during all three Seminole Wars. They were senior citizens amidst the strengthening of the California Gold Rush and as the U.S. federal government initiated the Trail of Tears. Most of their adult lives involved strife and warfare between Indigenous Tribal Nations and White lawmakers.
I’ve nicknamed Cradled Explorers as “the Common Sense Microgeneration” because their formative years were marked by the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense — which turned the tide toward the Patriot cause in favor of American independence. Their lives embodied the struggle between disparate visions of what American values should entail. Were these policies going to be truly sensible…or just convenient for the ruling elite?
Their Early Lives
Cradled Explorers were conceived and birthed during a transformative time period. On the heels of James Otis Jr.’s “Writs of Assistance” speech, vigilantes such as the Paxton Boys and the “Black Boys” were challenging British authority. Following 1763’s Treaty of Paris and Royal Proclamation Act, they resorted to violence in protest over limitations imposed upon White settlers when those frontiersmen wanted to encroach upon Indigenous lands.
This decade absorbed a host of tariffs and restrictions with which England burdened the Thirteen Colonies. Among them: the Sugar Act, the Currency Act, the Stamp Act, the Declaratory Act, and the Townshend Acts. These tensions escalated as the Boston Massacre triggered the American Revolution.
On the opposite coast of the future United States, Gaspar de Portolá led multiple expeditions up and down California. Even as mid-Atlantic plans to colonize “Vandalia” were abandoned, the forthcoming Madisonian generation would be raised with the awareness that bicoastal colonization was unavoidable — for better or for worse.
All of this occurred as a pluralistic array of Protestant denominations grew to acquire more socially-accepted statuses, alongside of Catholics and Quakers.
Being at the front of the Madisonian cohort, Cradled Explorers would see a reduction in their numbers (as opposed to previous cohorts) due to so many of them — or even some of their fathers — dying in the American Revolution. The next several cohorts would undergo a similar phenomenon, as life expectancy rates flatlined.
When They Came-of-Age
Throughout this period of volatile birthrates, many teenaged Cradled Explorers would lose their lives when fighting for either the British or Continental Armies. As puberty hit them, this microgeneration got swept up in the fervor of the Boston Tea Party, outrage over the Intolerable Acts, and excitement due to the First and Second Continental Congresses.
During the second half of the Eighteenth Century, life expectancy in the Colonies dipped — especially for young men. Battles such as Bunker Hill, Camden, and Yorktown epitomized armed conflict for the better part of a decade. The Continental Navy also rose to prominence during this time.
As the Declaration of Independence was signed, newly-minted Americans would be inspired to demand their own sovereignty. Crispus Attucks, Nathan Hale, Samuel Ashbow, Joseph Warren, Francis Marion, and Daniel Shays became symbols of such a fierce, unyielding desire. Driven by this spirit, John Dickinson led the drafting of what would become the Articles of Confederation…followed by the Continental Congress.
Since the Cradled Explorers were younger than the Liberty Lord and Goodpublican generations (as well as succeeding the Public Liberator cusp), there were fewer of them serving as commanding officers during the Revolutionary War. However, their microgeneration did spawn some Patriot veterans — including John Skey Eustace, Montford Stokes, Joseph Plumb Martin, Issac Van Wart, and John Chandler (the latter returning to service when the British attacked again in the 1810s).
They were truly the first “continental” microgeneration, having grown up learning about the 1769 creation of San Diego’s Presidio. During the Cradled Explorers’ teens, “Pan-Indianism” of the 1780s presented Tribal Nations with the conundrum of whether to risk betrayal by siding with either the British, the French, or the Spanish…or with other rival tribes against Europeans.
But the 1783 Treaty of Paris didn’t guarantee freedom for everyone. The Mason-Dixon Line had been surveyed, creating a literal divide between where slavery was or wasn’t legal. Indigenous chiefs such as Dragging Canoe, Egushawa, Logan the Orator, Hanging Maw, Cornstalk, Young Tassel, Ostenaco, Turtle-at-Home, Moluntha, Buckongahelas, Tarhe, Little Turtle, Blue Jacket, and Joseph Brant found their tribes pulled into decades’ worth of battles against White settlers.
These rivalries would be imprinted upon the Cradled Explorers, who’d keep confronting such dynamics well into their own adult lives.
How They Shaped The World
As the Cradled Explorers prepared to enter their thirties, the U.S. Constitution was signed — arising out of 1787’s Constitutional Convention. George Washington became America’s first president, and a primitive version of today’s two-party system manifested via a chasm separating Federalists from Democratic-Republicans.
People on this cusp saw President Washington guide Americans through some of our formalized nation’s first obstacles: yellow fever, the Whiskey Rebellion, and the Compromise of 1790. The next president, John Adams, oversaw the Quasi-War against France. Adams tried to console the nation upon Washington’s death, right before the turn of the century.
Now fortysomethings, Cradled Explorers dealt with the public’s loss of faith in systems when the U.S. Presidential Election of 1800 yielded an incongruent result. The United States Capitol moved from Philadelphia to Washington D.C. due to the Compromise of 1790 from a decade earlier.
To overcome the doubt surrounding his first presidential election victory, Thomas Jefferson sought to foster national unity. He mobilized against Barbary pirates in North Africa, while expanding American borders westward through the Louisiana Purchase. The Twelfth Amendment was ratified to elect American presidents and vice-presidents in a more orderly fashion.
More injustices accompanied the new century. Passage of Ohio’s “Black Laws” forecasted growing opposition to slavery. The Burr/Hamilton duel illuminated the excesses of bad behavior from public officials. Even Lewis & Clark’s expedition paved the way for further displacement of Indigenous tribes in the western half of the North American continent.
American “outlaw culture” also began with the Cradled Explorers: the Doan Boys, Peggy Shippen, David Bradford, and Patty Cannon were among the first of this archetype.
Throughout their fifties, Cradled Explorers enjoyed speedier waterway travel when The Clermont (later renamed the North River Steamboat) set sail. Construction began on the National Road, which would endure a quarter-century of primary development.
Racial oppression continued to mount. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Fletcher v. Peck ruling intensified the federal government’s slaughter of Indigenous Tribal Nations — in short order, the Battle of Tippecanoe and the Creek War ensued. A failed attempt by Charles Deslondes to escape Manuel Andry’s plantation sparked more decades of anti-Black public statutes from White lawmakers.
Great Britain wasn’t done with the neophyte Americans, either. The War of 1812 — culminating in the Battle of New Orleans — forced both nations to acknowledge one another’s staying power. They soon agreed to become conditional allies.
As the Eighteenth Century shimmered into the Nineteenth Century, some of the staunchest voices for abolition resonated from the Cradled Explorer cusp. Liss Townsend was an enslaved woman whom historians theorize may have been the true identity of “Agent 355” (helping to bring down British spy John André). Richard Allen blended his roles as clergyman and activist to put the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church on the map. Paul Cuffe forged paths for Black entrepreneurs while promoting African repatriation. William Rawle was one of the first White abolitionists to oppose slavery in a courtroom — which he did in front of the Maryland Supreme Court in 1805.
Cradled Explorers who died while in their sixties perceived an apparent denouement in the American story. President James Monroe’s Great Goodwill Tour coincided with a renowned status for the tenderfoot Harvard Law School. A number of new developments strengthened America’s hegemonic presence in the world…
The Jackson Purchase extended U.S. control of land previously owned by the Chickasaw tribe.
Florida fell into American hands through the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 negotiated with Spain.
A balance between the number of “free states” and “slave states” was maintained as a result of the Missouri Compromise.
The Monroe Doctrine shielded the United States, Canada, and Latin American countries from being recolonized by Europe.
Cradled Explorers were couched in the grey area shared by Goodpublicans and Madisonians, which meant they had the advantage of being part of how adept those two generations were at political organizing. American leaders born between the 1750s and the 1770s built movements uniting working-class and elite mobilizers alike…in ways that hadn’t been broached by prior generations. Such a new type of political evolution had surfaced, in practice, by the 1810s.
This microgeneration transitioned into their sixties as the “Era of Good Feelings” came to an end. Public trauma from the Panic of 1819 created an opening for Andrew Jackson (having gained infamy due to his combat record during the First Seminole War) to exploit public mistrust in American banking. Jackson’s defeat to John Quincy Adams — despite winning the popular vote — in the 1824 U.S. Presidential Election set the stage for a new flavor of populist extremism.
Their Golden Years
Entering the final phase of their lives, Cradled Explorers witnessed President Jackson’s bloviant tour-de-force following his 1828 election. His most malevolent scheme was turbocharging the forced removal of Indigenous Tribal Nations — which set the Trail of Tears in motion. Feats in engineering — such as the Tom Thumb steam locomotive — portended white conquest of the continent’s western half.
Jackson’s anti-Indigenous policies spurred the Second Seminole War and the Creek War of 1836. He took advantage of the major political realignment that was occurring: Federalists transitioned into the Whigs, while the Democratic-Republicans became Jacksonian Democrats. The attempted rebellion of Nat Turner and other enslaved Virginians would serve as a harbinger of the partisan antipathy revolving around slavery across the rest of this century.
The Panic of 1837 served as a key American turning point in regard to the dangers of unregulated banking. Those of the Cradled Explorers who made it to the 1840s beheld mainstream usage of the Oregon Trail — in addition to the two decades’ worth of traveling the Santa Fe Trail (especially for gold prospectors). President James Polk popularized the term “Manifest Destiny,” tying religious determinism to American exceptionalism. The Mexican-American War came and went, just as the roots of women’s suffrage sprouted at Seneca Falls.
As the most venerable Cradled Explorers entered the 1850s, political negotiators created new landmines that would lead to the Civil War: the Compromise of 1850, Harriet Beecher Stowe publishing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stephen Douglas crafting the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and John Brown’s defiance at the Pottawatomie Massacre. Jefferson Davis lobbied President Franklin Pierce to sign the Gadsden Purchase. The Whig Party began to dissolve.
The Cradled Explorer microgeneration died out during the couple of decades leading up to the Civil War, with their cohort nearly extinct by the time of the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision. Most of them wouldn’t be around for the Panic of 1857.
Although none of the Cradled Explorers signed the Declaration of Independence, this cusp had spawned the youngest Founding Fathers — John Francis Mercer, William Jackson, and Jonathan Dayton (the latter of whom was the youngest person to have signed the U.S. Constitution).
Others from this microgeneration who opened doors for future Americans…
Mason Fitch Cogswell pioneered formal education for deaf people.
Bostonian journalist Benjamin Russell coined the phrase “Era of Good Feeling.”
James Kent broached the genre of legal reporting.
Zephaniah Swift wrote America’s first legal treatise.
The high-pressure steam engine was built by Nathan Read.
Albert Gallatin founded NYU and became the longest-serving U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.
Our country’s first multimillionaire was John Jacob Astor.
Anna Gardie gave currency to stage acting and dancing, as America’s first ballet-pantomime performer.
Parson Weems gifted scholars with biographies of George Washington.
Depending on how long they lived, these Cradled Explorers could see as many as fourteen U.S. Presidents (from Washington through Pierce) during their existence. On the other end of the spectrum, this cohort was the last microgeneration to have never lived long enough to witness the American Civil War.
Here are 10 prominent Americans from the Cradled Explorer cohort:
Members of the previous microgenerations were named…
Colonial Zygotes | Turnip Squeezers | Starving Timers
Long Climbers | Rumpus Rebels | Emerald Knights
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