JIGSAW GENS
Defiant Giants — The Dark Embargo Microgeneration
As the youngest Unimpressionists and the oldest Transcendentals, this cusp felt the pain of economic restraints…and lashed out, loudly
Although many people insist that age is just a number, the years when we enter this world mark gradual shifts toward change. No, entire generations themselves aren’t monolithic. But they have been a product of their time. They provide a mirror into the state of the world during the decades when they lived.
Through my “Jigsaw Gens” anthology, I track these evolutions. While we must acknowledge differences in human behavior and knowledge during time periods, we can also draw parallels between the past and the present.
A foundation for this timeline has been a collection of 27 primary generations that I’ve honed in on…
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 concept of generations has some flexibility to it. There aren’t hard starting points or stopping points for who exists as part of a “generation.” Rather, those bookends are debatable and subject to interpretation.
For people who fall “on the cusp” between two larger generations, there will be a grey area of commonality. Known as “microgenerations,” they offer a period of 3–5 years during which the youngest members of one generation and the oldest members of another generation have some wiggle room to determine their sense of belonging.
To approximate who exactly falls along one of these “cusps,” I’ve been outlining various microgenerations across the historical spectrum. Kids of the mid- to late-1790s have been christened, by me, as the Defiant Giants.
Who They Are
Defiant Giants were born approximately between 1794 to 1798 — give or take a couple of years on either end. They form a nexus between the youngest Unimpressionists and the oldest Transcendentals. Born into George Washington’s presidency, their earliest memories were of the turn of the Nineteenth Century. Shays’ Rebellion had occurred a decade prior to their births; as a result, American governmental officials anticipated the possibility of similar armed uprisings.
In their teenaged years, they learned of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s joint-expedition; the National Road soon became a key conduit for cross-country travel. The “Era of Good Feelings” spanned their twenties and thirties. As enslavement of Black people and displacement of Indigenous people were hotly debated, Defiant Giants raised children and grandchildren in a culture that had just begun to nationalize Puritan/Pilgrim romanticism (arising from Daniel Webster’s 1820 “Plymouth Oration” speech) as part of America’s distinct identity.
Defiant Giants experienced specific cultural changes on American soil, such as the New Church and Transcendentalist movements. As fortysomethings, they were surrounded by a newly-emergent American sports culture. By the time they’d reached their fifties, the occultist practice of Spiritualism had taken hold in the United States.
I use “the Dark Embargo Microgeneration” to refer to Defiant Giants, since they spent most of their lives grappling with trade restrictions — whether due to America’s international rivalries or because of Union/Confederacy hostilities during the Civil War. Seeing traffic on the Sante Fe and Oregon Trails balloon in real time, they headed into elderhood amidst Harriet Beecher Stowe’s rise — becoming the oldest cusp to witness the end of Reconstruction.
Whether advocating for freedom or bondage, they followed vocal stalwarts from their cohort who didn’t hesitate to rebel against whichever narratives they diametrically opposed.
Their Early Lives
Defiant Giants found themselves born into a world where the United States Navy was being strengthened while in its infancy. This was a period of revolt and betrayal: on the heels of the yellow fever epidemic, Federalists turned against President John Adams when he passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, while France incited the Quasi-War by attempting to extort money from America. George Washington’s death further unsettled our fledgling nation as the turn of the century arrived.
As the U.S. Capitol moved from New York City to Washington D.C., these kids took in an array of chaos at the dawn of a new century. Thomas Jefferson partially recreated the “Spirit of ’76” in a contentious four-way presidential election where the incumbent (Adams) became the first defeated American commander-in-chief. President Jefferson led this century’s first decade as social norms and ambitions evolved: the Louisiana Purchase, passage of the Twelfth Amendment, Lewis & Clark’s expedition, the Hamilton/Burr duel, the Barbary War, and innovation of The Clermont (later the North River Steamboat) facilitating riverboat travel.
Although the Defiant Giants saw their elders demand greater civility and decorum in the name of American unity — such humanity wasn’t extended to Black people. Slavery continued to divide the nation. Gabriel’s Rebellion in 1800 stoked fear in the White-run state legislatures. Ohio’s “Black Laws” were perhaps the most high-profile example of this racial discrimination by requiring, among other things, free Black residents to show proof of their liberation from enslaved status.
When They Came-of-Age
For a bulk of the Defiant Giants’ existence, life expectancy would mostly plateau in comparison to that of the Liberty Babes whose cusp had preceded theirs. These Defiant Giant children had limited exposure to the phantasmagoria (“magic lanterns”) that would sometimes be used for educational lectures. They’d be well past their adolescence by the time “lantern shows” grew more widely available for leisure entertainment.
The major conflict of Defiant Giants’ early- to mid-adolescence was the Embargo Act of 1807, during which Jefferson banned international trade. This radical isolationism was repealed at the end of his presidency, but it exacerbated America’s tensions with Great Britain. Circumstances were made all the more toxic by the British Navy’s impressment of American sailors — leading to the War of 1812.
Because of when they were born, male Defiant Giants had the distinction of serving in three major periods of American warfare: the youngest of them died in the War of 1812 and the first Creek War; toward middle age, some of them fought in the First and Second Seminole Wars or the second Creek War; the oldest surviving military commanders saw action in the Mexican-American War, the Third Seminole War, and even the Civil War.
Among these Defiant Giant war veterans were: Silas H. Stringham, Charles H. Bell, Hiram Paulding, Richard Barnes Mason, Robert F. Stockton, Charles Mynn Thruston, William “Extra Billy” Smith, Ethan A. Hitchcock, James Boggs, Edwin Vose Sumner, John Joseph Abercrombie, Gershom Jacques Van Brunt, Joseph Pannell Taylor, Richard Delafield, and John Adams Dix.
But, for now, let’s focus on the Defiant Giants’ young adulthood. The 1811 German Coast Uprising kept conflict over slavery on the forefront of lawmakers’ minds. President James Madison ushered in the beginning of the National Road’s construction. Within another decade, the Monroe Doctrine created a demand for American exceptionalism; President James Monroe’s “Great Goodwill” tour promoted this aggressive new foreign policy.
U.S. borders expanded with the Jackson Purchase and the Adams-Onis Treaty. Even as Harvard Law School brought greater prestige to the legal profession, America experienced its first “boom-and-bust” crisis upon the Panic of 1819. Deep divisions over slavery were shakily delayed via the Missouri Compromise.
How They Shaped The World
As the Defiant Giants became parents, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Fletcher v. Peck ruling had set the stage for codified abuse of Indigenous people. After John Quincy Adams was awarded the presidency by state congressional delegations (with Andrew Jackson earning only a plurality of the Electoral College and popular vote in the 1824 election), Jackson made a comeback. His ascendency to the White House signaled arrival of the Second Party System — a realignment between Whigs and Jacksonian Democrats.
For leisure, Defiant Giant adults enjoyed the emergence of formal cricket clubs (as chronicled in Tom Melville’s book, The Tented Field)…even though cricket had been played, on occasion, since the turn of the century. In 1833, Philadelphia’s Olympic Base Ball Club provided athletes with a taste of what would — within a matter of decades — become America’s favorite pastime. And the Tom Thumb steam locomotive had been designed by Peter Cooper (of the Unimpressionist generation), boosting the viability of railway transport systems.
1831’s slave rebellion by Nat Turner shook white supremacy to its core. By the time Defiant Giants were fortysomethings, the Trail of Tears wrested Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole refugees away from their ancestral homelands. Anglocentric folklore surrounding the Battle of the Alamo erased Tejano, Chicano, and Mestizo contributions to the American story.
President Jackson’s irresponsible fiscal policies and reckless land speculation created the Panic of 1837. Amid this turbulence, adherents to the Transcendentalist movement (*not* to be confused with the Transcendental generation) used The Dial as a magazine to promote human goodness. President James Knox Polk popularized the concept of “Manifest Destiny” to justify continental land expansion. As Texas was granted statehood and the Oregon Treaty was signed, Polk’s hunger brought about the Mexican-American War.
President Polk himself was a Defiant Giant, as were many prominent abolitionists: Sojourner Truth, Horace Mann, David Walker, Levi Coffin, Gerrit Smith, and William L. Chaplin. Amongst staunch supporters of slavery, Jim Bowie and Robert Cooper Grier came from this cohort.
Other Defiant Giant politicians straddled the pro-slavery and anti-slavery demarcation: Edward Everett, John Bell, Thomas Holliday Hicks, Reverdy Johnson, George Nixon Briggs, Joshua Reed Giddings, and John M. Clayton.
By the time everyone from this cohort was in their fifties, the California Gold Rush had gotten underway. This “gold fever” caused free states to eye California’s admission to the Union, which prompted the Compromise of 1850.
The Seneca Falls Convention marked a turning point for women’s suffrage. Antislavery organizers (from various generations) such as Josiah Henson, Charles Sumner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Theodore Dwight Weld forced Americans to reckon with the forthcoming Civil War. As the Whig Party collapsed, a series of fatal events hastened that warfare: the “Bleeding Kansas” period (brought about by the Gadsden Purchase and the Kansas-Nebraska Act), the Third Seminole War, public reaction to the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, greater fissures from the Panic of 1857, and John Brown’s Pottawatomie Massacre and raid on Harpers Ferry.
Even as Defiant Giants prepared to assume senior-citizen status while the forthcoming Civil War loomed, the general public still tried to distract themselves with recreational pursuits. The National Association of Base Ball Players formed in 1857, and cricket competitions enjoyed a temporary resurgence.
Science was significantly advanced under the research-based leadership of Americans on this cusp. John Torrey (biology), Margaretta Morris (entemology), Joseph Henry (physics), Richard Harlan (paleontology), James Ferguson (astronomy), Edmund Ruffin (soil science), and James Eights (geology) gave us a heightened understanding of why the universe works the way it does. Walter Hunt invented the safety pin and the sewing machine. Francis Lieber became an educational powerhouse.
Defiant Giants also helped the Industrial Revolution prosper. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Daniel Drew, and Johns Hopkins made railroads and waterways profitable. Piano manufacturing was shepherded by James Lick, Henry Engelhard Steinway, and Jonas Chickering.
Fur trading and geographic expeditions started to wane, but the Defiant Giants still had their participants in these professions: Matthew C. Perry, Charles Wilkes, Benjamin Bonneville, William Sublette, and François Chouteau.
Arts & literature flourished throughout the Nineteenth Century, benefitting from its Eighteenth-Century trailblazers. Their Defiant Giant stewards included…
- Poets (George Moses Horton, Samuel Henry Dickson, McDonald Clarke)
- Religious orators (Joseph Brackett, John Winebrenner, John Joseph Hughes)
- Painters (George Catlin, John Neagle, Elizabeth Goodridge, Maria Martin, Asher Brown Durand)
- Historians (Thomas Bulfinch, William H. Prescott, Jacob Bailey Moore)
- Thespians (Amelia Holman Gilfert, Frances Ann Denny Drake, Cornelia Frances Jefferson)
George Peabody went on to become the “Father of Philanthropy,” while Jacob Hyer achieved esteem as America’s first professional boxer.
Their Golden Years
In their old age, Defiant Giants watched the Civil War play out. Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes were slaughtered across the Great Plains. Within a span of three years: the Draft Riots plagued New York City, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and the Ku Klux Klan terrorized “others” (as well as those who were allied with “others”).
This microgeneration entered the seventh decade of their lives during Reconstruction. Events such as the Alaska Purchase, completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, women gaining the right to vote in Wyoming, and President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment left them wondering what sort of brave new world might await their children and grandchildren.
For Defiant Giants who survived the latter half of Reconstruction, they experienced many new developments. Cricket, which had lost popularity, was supplanted heavily by baseball. Yellowstone National Park opened, the Tenure of Office Act, and the Pendelton Act passed. Organized labor found solidarity through the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Gold and silver rebounded due to the Resumption Act and the Bland-Allison Act.
Yet, the Panic of 1873 arose from the world’s first global depression. President Ulysses S. Grant’s corrupt administration brought about the Whiskey Ring Scandal — which harkened the beginning of the Gilded Age.
Even though the Fifteenth Amendment granted Black men the right to vote, a new era of Jim Crow ravaged the country. Despite Victoria Woodhull being the first American woman to mount a presidential candidacy, the Comstock Act severely restricted women’s reproductive health care. Comanche, Kiowa, and Nez Pearce warriors joined other tribes across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains in taking on — and, ultimately, falling to — the U.S. federal government.
In the twilight of their lives, the longest-lasting Defiant Giants saw the rise of members from the Redeemer, Golden Renegade, Stowegressive, and Missionary generations: Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Oscar Hammerstein Sr., Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, B.F. Keith, Percy G. Williams, John D. Rockefeller, Wyatt Earp, and John Pemberton.
The last representatives from this Defiant Giant cusp watched the Statue of Liberty be erected and the Washington Monument open. They were the oldest cusp still alive when Jack the Ripper terrorized London (leading to the earliest iterations of “true crime” fascination). Most of them would die before President Grover Cleveland lost the 1888 Electoral College; they never lived to hear of the Wounded Knee Massacre nor passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
So many of them had devoted their lives to defying conventional norms. With each succeeding decade, this cusp was rocked by dramatic shifts. But they would always leave Earth desiring much more than they’d ever been able to accomplish.
Here are 10 prominent Americans from the Defiant Giant cohort:
Therese Albertine Luise Robinson
Members of the previous microgenerations were named…
Colonial Zygotes | Turnip Squeezers | Starving Timers
Long Climbers | Rumpus Rebels | Emerald Knights
Royal Raiders | Pre-Continentals | Bottled Beacons
Click here to subscribe to my stories.
