JIGSAW GENS
Late-Goldens — The Outlaw Microgeneration
As the youngest Golden Renegades and the oldest Stowegressives, this cusp dealt with glorification of crime amidst declining economic fortunes
Ageism has become an escalating problem within American culture that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. It comes from public figures, media gatekeepers, power brokers, commercial marketers…and just regular people on the street. Age-based antipathy functions like any other “-ism.” This is an attempt to “otherize” a group (based on clustered birthyears) and push them down…in order to build oneself up.
It’s destructive. It’s petty. It’s illogical.
My passion for helping folks overcome this bigotry and bias would be a series that I’ve titled “Jigsaw Gens” — an anthology surveying generational cohorts across the American historical spectrum.
In becoming more aware of our intergenerational blind spots, we also learn more about how history reveals our society’s inner truths. When we analyze the past, we’ll find that the present makes more sense to us. And by linking the past with the present, we can more mindfully plan for the future.
Beginning with the Sixteenth Century, I’ve defined the following 27 generations pertaining to American 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
Generations are more cultural than scientific. Although we do establish ranges of birthyears to define generational cohorts, the beginnings and ends of those ranges are up for a certain amount of debate. Those endpoints should be more of an approximation than a precise marker.
That leads us to the folks who are essentially caught between two generations. When people fall within a grey area where two larger generations overlap, we can admit they are part of a “microgeneration.”
At the edge of two cohorts, these “cusps” fill the gap where one’s generational identity isn’t quite so iron-clad.
How do we pinpoint “cuspers” across the historical landscape? Again, it isn’t an exact science. That involves establishing where a given generation’s origins began — and then fleshing out the decades (or, more broadly speaking, the eras) that have defined various stages of their lives.
For Americans born during the late-1840s: I’d place them along a cusp that I refer to as the Late-Goldens.
Who They Are
Late-Goldens were born approximately between 1845 to 1849 — give or take a couple of years on either end. They blur the lines between the youngest Golden Renegades and the oldest Stowegressives. Being children of America’s antebellum period, the Late-Goldens moved through adolescence and into young adulthood during the Civil War.
As adults, they found themselves in the thick of escalations regarding women’s suffrage, slavery abolition & racial segregation, and the U.S. government’s persecution of Tribal Nations. Their rise into leadership positions aligned with tumult involving organized labor, corruption, and monetary policy changes. They were in their forties and fifties during the time when America rose as a global force, soon paving the way for aerospace culture’s inception.
I have dubbed Late-Goldens as “the Outlaw Microgeneration” because such a huge chunk of their lives involved the flourishing — and eventual downfall — of the Wild West. They retained vivid memories of all three of the Nineteenth Century’s presidential assassinations. Americans on this cusp were fully embroiled in the country’s burgeoning sports cultures — which also became tied, culturally, to the worsening political divide in the United States.
Those on the Late-Golden cusp navigated their old age throughout World War I, the Roaring Twenties, and the Great Depression. The final survivors of this microgeneration died during World War II; they wouldn’t live to see the atomic bomb created.
Their Early Lives
Late-Goldens were born in a time when Westward Expansion was on the upswing. Texas had just gained statehood, and Oregon Territory became a coveted destination for homesteaders. The Mexican-American War and the California Gold Rush also occupied the attention of merchants and landowners alike.
Their childhoods encompassed whirlwinds of social change. A national movement for women’s suffrage had blossomed at Seneca Falls. Charles Sumner, Harriett Beecher Stowe, Dred Scott, and John Brown worked hard to accelerate the abolition of slavery. In the aftermath of the Trail of Tears, America’s Seminole and Miccosukee tribes took anguished stands for self-sovereignty.
Amidst a revival of cricket (to compete with the emergence of baseball), a similar binary of political spirit persisted; these kids absorbed the contrasting images of rugged eccentricity (embodied by President Zachary Taylor, aka “Old Rough and Ready”) versus stodgy patrician detachment (exemplified by Winfield Scott, aka “Old Fuss and Feathers”).
Late-Golden children lived in a world where Transcendentalists and Spiritualists insisted upon being heard. They were raised within a society where the Whig Party was collapsing, slavery increasingly divided Americans with each passing year, and the Panic of 1857 exploded in the wake of gold-induced inflation and hasty asset speculation.
When They Came-of-Age
As the final Nineteenth-Century microgeneration to reach adulthood before American life expectancies visibly surged, Late-Goldens came-of-age during the Civil War. Much like their Cradled Explorer and Defiant Giant ancestors, this cohort of teenagers had to be ready — at a moment’s notice — to confront armed enemies at their front doorsteps…sometimes those with whom they even shared blood ties.
The Late-Goldens had inched toward puberty while reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Augustus Hoppin’s travelogue strips. They were the absolute-youngest soldiers in the Civil War — although proper members of the Golden Renegade generation served as the highest percentage of youthful cannon fodder for the Union and the Confederacy. Their postwar memories would come to include President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the surge of baseball culture, an early iteration of Reconstruction-era Jim Crow laws, the Alaska Purchase, and lobbying by the Grangers.
President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment was perhaps the most salacious D.C. scandal of their post-adolescent years. As Late-Goldens got married and reared families, they confronted a new world marked by railroad travel, women’s suffrage, and public corruption amongst crime lords.
Ah…the Gilded Age! It had begun.
How They Shaped The World
As parents trying to raise their families during “The Long Depression” (triggered by the Panic of 1873 — more than a half-century before the Great Depression would hit), Late-Goldens redefined the American economy. They helped their elder mentors implement the gold standard while overseeing the “free silver” movement. Railroad strikes and the Whiskey Ring Scandal led up to the end of Reconstruction.
Black Late-Goldens struggled to survive as Jim Crow laws morphed and attacked their families. The Red River Indian War, the Battle of Little Bighorn, the Nez Perce War, and the Wounded Knee Massacre exacerbated anti-Indigenous racism. The Virginius Affair stigmatized Americans with Latine heritage. People of Asian descent saw how unwelcome they were in the U.S. via the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Late-Golden artists helped make the visual arts more diversified: everything from painting (William Merritt Chase, Julian A. Scott, David Pendleton Oakerhater, Kicking Bear, Abbott Handerson Thayer), sculpting (Vinnie Ream, Augustus Saint-Gaudens), weaving & pottery (We’wha), architecture (Daniel Burnham, Bruce Price), and stained glass (Louis Comfort Tiffany).
Standout writers from this cohort included: Frances Hodgson Burnett, James Whitcomb Riley, Emma Lazarus, José Gautier Benítez, Sarah Orne Jewett, George Washington Williams, and Elizabeth Harrison. There was also Francis Davis Millet (who died aboard the Titanic) — an artist-writer hyphenate.
This microgeneration continued advancing music (“Blind Tom” Wiggins, Edward Everett Rice, John Thomas Douglass, Frederick Gleason), acting (Lotta Crabtree, Effie Germon, Jennie Lee), and journalism (Jacob Riis, Finis L. Bates, Joel Chandler Harris, Rosa Kershaw Walker).
They likewise elevated the business world — with the likes of Joseph Pulitzer, William Kissam Vanderbilt, Jacob Schiff, Harriet Hubbard Ayer, William Lewis Douglas, James Anthony Bailey, Mary Foot Seymour, Henry Clay Frick, Isidor Straus, and Frank Manley Warren Sr. (the latter two perishing on the Titanic, alongside of Millet).
Even as Wild Bill Hickok, the McLaury Brothers, Billy Clanton, and Jesse James fell to their deaths in the Wild West — innovation found new life elsewhere. Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell shepherded electricity and telephone services. Booker T. Washington led the Tuskegee Institute. John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil. These younger and older cohorts inspired Late-Goldens to demand so much more out of life.
Edison and Bell led the pack of inventors who were part of the Late-Golden microgeneration. Their peers’ accomplishments included:
LaMarcus Adna Thompson’s roller coaster.
The railway air brake and alternating current, as engineered by George Westinghouse.
Lewis Howard Latimer’s improvements to lighting and air circulation.
A phonetic system for hearing-impaired people, which Caroline Yale pioneered.
George Franklin Grant’s golf tee.
The zipper and railway parts from the brain of Whitcomb L. Judson.
Andrew Jackson Beard’s knuckler coupler enhancements.
Scientific advancements courtesy of the Late-Goldens spanned everything from chemistry (Ira Remsen) to physics (Sarah Frances Whiting) to astronomy (Edward Charles Pickering) to botany & horticulture (Luther Burbank) to herbalism (Owl Woman) to zoology (William Keith Brooks) to ophthalmology (Isabel Barrows).
The rise of sports & recreation resulted in happier lives for Americans due to the dopamine rush and social bonding experience of spectator sports. Late-Goldens such as George Wright, Lip Pike, and Deacon White made names for themselves across the soaring phenomenon of baseball. In fact, they were the first American cusp to have no memories of a world before baseball had become popular.
But the Gilded Age didn’t make Americans immune from outrage. The Comstock Act set off a centuries-long battle over women’s reproductive freedoms. Congress gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency over Samuel Tilden in 1876; twelve years later, Grover Cleveland would likewise lose the Electoral College despite winning the popular vote. President James A. Garfield was assassinated by Charles J. Guiteau in 1881.
This made Late-Goldens the youngest microgeneration eligible to vote in the 1880 Presidential Election — which had the closest popular-vote margin in American history.
Other uniquely-American symbols that emerged from the 1880s and 1890s: the Brooklyn Bridge, five continental time zones, the Pledge of Allegiance, Coca-Cola, the eight-hour workday, Groundhog Day, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Washington Monument, Carnegie Hall, the Dayton Tattler, vaudeville theatres, the Casa Grande ruins, Herman Hollerith’s tabulation machine, and the Wrigley & General Electric Companies.
Throughout their forties and fifties, Late-Goldens were forced to comfort their children and grandchildren in the face of successive tragedies and disasters: Rock Springs, the Johnstown Flood, the Panic of 1893, the Galveston Hurricane, and the San Francisco Earthquake.
During these decades, Edison continued to pioneer sight and sound — motion pictures (including the recorded 1894 boxing match between James J. Corbett and Peter Courtney) and radio transmissions. The International Copyright Act of 1891 was passed. Oscar Hammerstein opened the Olympia Theatre. Homesteaders migrated to Oklahoma Territory (especially the Cherokee Strip), while gold prospectors flocked to the Yukon’s Klondike region. Boston christened America’s first underground subway.
Civil service, labor rights, women’s suffrage, and antitrust legislation took gradual steps forward. But America’s battles for equality were only heating up. The U.S. government annexed the Kingdom of Hawai’i after overthrowing Queen Liliʻuokalani. In Washington D.C., Coxey’s Army marched for economic equality. Plessy v. Ferguson created the “separate but equal” doctrine — amplifying greater necessity for the NAACP’s founding, thirteen years later. The Spanish-American War and the Maine exploding in Havana Harbor worsened stigmas against Black and Brown people throughout the U.S.
And, ushering in the dawn of the Twentieth Century, President William McKinley’s assassination at the hands of Leon Czolgosz punctuated the Gilded Age’s epilogue with a somber period.
As a cohort, the Late-Goldens produced no U.S. Presidents…and very few prominent politicians, compared to other microgenerations. Two U.S. Supreme Court Justices — William R. Day and Edward Douglass White — were Late-Goldens.
But, coming on the heels of the Golden Renegades, this cusp spawned a wide variety of Wild West personalities: Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill, John Ware, “Texas Jack” Omohundro, Henry Berry Lowry, Jim Younger, Belle Starr, Isam Dart, and Seth Bullock.
Activism continued as a ripe tradition for the Late-Golden cohort. Anna Howard Shaw, Maritcha Remond Lyons, Sallie Joy White, and Ella Flagg Young advanced women’s suffrage. Moorfield Storey and William R. Pettiford kept the fires of racial justice burning. Sigismund Danielewicz helped to put labor leaders on the map.
By the time Late-Goldens had reached their sixties, automobiles and national parks were contributing to leisure and diversions. American sports culture had skyrocketed. In addition to baseball — athletic pursuits such as football, golf, basketball, sport shooting, race car driving, track & field, competitive cycling, swimming, gymnastics, long-distance running, archery, boxing, and wrestling became mainstream. Some (but not all) of these events would gradually be added to the World Olympic Games.
The Wright Brothers had laid the groundwork for air travel. Americans commandeered the Panama Canal. Diplomats such as John Hay (a Golden Renegade) and Elihu Root (a Late-Golden himself) brokered positive steps toward U.S. relations with both China and Japan. The Mann Act brought human trafficking into the public consciousness.
Their Golden Years
Seven major American milestones marked the Late-Golden’s geriatric years: the sinking of the Titanic, World War I, the Spanish Flu epidemic, Prohibition (via the Eighteenth Amendment), American women gaining the nationwide right to vote (via the Nineteenth Amendment), the Great Depression, and America’s entry into World War II.
Specifically, the Titanic (with nearly one-quarter of its passengers being U.S. citizens) reminded Americans how we weren’t infallible on the world stage. Later, both the Lusitania’s sinking and the Hindenburg’s explosion would visually boost this ongoing cue.
Therefore, as they increasingly passed away, Late-Goldens watched their youngsters become split between isolationism or globalization. Was it a positive thing for U.S. Virgin Islanders to become American citizens? How many of President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points were warranted? Was it wise to implement the Smoot-Hawley and Fordney-McCumber tariffs? Did Charles Lindbergh’s and Amelia Earhart’s aviation successes forecast unity — or adversity — when making overseas connections? How realistic were the Neutrality Acts?
Battles against misogyny and in favor of women’s empowerment were just getting started. Juliette Gordon Low, Alice Paul, Jeannette Rankin, Lucy Burns, Anna Jarvis, Edith Wilson, Nellie Tayloe Ross, Pearl Buck, and Hattie Caraway would soon inspire new generations of girls and women to take up this fight.
White supremacy continued to be challenged. Travesties such as The Birth of a Nation’s premiere and the Tulsa Race Massacre contributed to northward migrations of Black people. This foreshadowed the visible activism of youthful public figures including Jesse Owens and A. Philip Randolph during the end of the Late-Goldens’ lifetimes.
Indigenous Americans finally gained formal citizenship and made inroads toward tribal sovereignty. People of Chinese and Japanese descent slowly gained greater acceptance in the wake of the Root-Takahira and Lansing-Ishii Agreements, the Open Door Policy, and the Nine Power Treaty — although 1937’s Panay Incident set back that progress. In general, immigration policy dramatically changed via increased border control and quotas.
Late-Goldens were the oldest generation to see today’s truly modern wars over American exceptionalism have their seeds planted. Toward the conclusion of Late-Goldens’ lifespans, the Dawes and Young Plans created a 21-year reprieve between both World Wars. Temperance activists drove alcohol underground, while attacks were launched against Americans suspected of socialist or communist sympathies.
As Prohibition ended and the “Dust Bowl” lingered, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs enshrined debates over free markets versus heavy regulation that have persisted for the past century. Banking regulation, housing, fair trade, Social Security, collective bargaining, public works, and taxation on wealth became contentious amongst progressives, libertarians, and everyone in-between.
All the while, you had instigators such as Al Capone, John Washington Butler, Albert B. Fall, William Jennings Bryan, and J. Edgar Hoover finding new ways to exploit Americans and pit us against one another. Their legacies of corruption, hubris, and disingenuity would last long after they went to their respective graves.
Is it any surprise that — in the twilight of the Late-Goldens’ lives — Superman became such an iconic American literary hero? Or that 1938’s War of the Worlds radio broadcast incited both patriotic indignance as well as irrational panic?
Late-Goldens were on the frontlines of a shift toward “going rogue” within the context of American daily life. They fought over ideology as U.S. reach expanded…and domestic tensions flared. Although their cusp wouldn’t live long enough to see transistors and microchips introduced — they filled a template of unsettled scores which the digital age would ultimately prove to rekindle.
Here are 10 prominent Americans from the Late-Golden cohort:
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
Primordial Founders | Aucto-Septennials | Public Liberators
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