JIGSAW GENS

Transcendentals — A Legacy of Purity & Intuition

The Transcendentals (“Prairie Embryos” or “Blue Shirts”) drove a transition from nationalistic unity to sectarian fracture

My “Jigsaw Gens” series from the first half of 2023 has featured America’s eight most recent generational cohorts: Hemingrebels, GI-Gens, Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, GenXers, Millennials, Zoomers, and Alphas.

As I’ve expanded this series to spotlight who came before the Hemingrebels, I’ve categorized generations from prior to the 1880s as the Missionaries, Stowegressives, Golden Renegades, and Redeemers.

So who came before the Redeemers?

That would be members of the generation whom I’ve classified as the “Transcendentals.”

Who They Are

Transcendentals were born approximately between 1799 to 1810 — give or take a few years on either end. They comprised much of the Transcendental cohort of “prophets” and “idealists” as constructed by historians William Strauss and Neil Howe. Members from their generation became active in supporting (or working against) the American transcendentalist movement of the 1820s through 1840s.

This was the first “Gold Rush generation.” Because they were children during the War of 1812, Transcendentals grew up during a time when Americans held onto the hope that this fledgling nation wouldn’t be torn apart by sharp divides between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. They were in their adult prime years during the four-way presidential election of 1824. Many of them forced their families to become frontiersmen and frontierswomen following the Panic of 1837. They rose as society’s key elder statesmen throughout the 1850s and 1860s while quarreling over slavery and railroad-based commerce as well as imperialism into Latin America and the Pacific theatre of Oceania.

Other nicknames for Transcendentals could include: Prairie Embryos, in order to allude to how they were amongst the first wave of pioneers and gold prospectors to broach Westward Expansion in significant numbers; Blue Shirts, since the abolitionists in their midst set the stage for the modern Democratic Party even when they’d founded the insurgent Republican Party that now seems antithetical to its Tea Party and MAGA descendants of the present day; Mountaineers, because of how they’d traversed the Appalachians, Great Smokies, Adirondacks, and, ultimately, the Rockies, in order to settle the frontier between the Mississippi River and Pacific Ocean; Appleseeds, seeing how Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joseph Smith Jr., and New Church adherents derived inspiration from the teachings of John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman of the earlier “Madisonian” generation; or Dialers, in reference to the magazine founded in 1840 that would come to be led by Transcendentals such as Orestes Brownson, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, Frederic Henry Hedge, and George Ripley.

These nicknames allude to the activities and lifestyles of people born within the Nineteenth Century’s first decade — regardless of whether they individually chose to identify as part of the organized transcendentalist movement.

What They Went Through

Transcendentals had amongst the most volatile lifetimes of any American generation. They were children and teens when the Battle of New Orleans definitively showed America’s might on the world stage through defeat of the British (even though President James Madison had negotiated peace well before then). With the “Goodpublican” generation in control of society, young adult (and older teenaged) Transcendentals enjoyed “the Era of Good Feelings.”

But such national unity would be short-lived. Many of the Transcendentals saw Andrew Jackson lose the Electoral College in a four-way presidential race. Jackson’s comeback in 1828 led to a new phase of acrimony known as “the Second Party System.” Regional coalitions split by ideology upended American politics. Partisanship became more bitterly entrenched.

Those who were in good health risked their lives (and sometimes lost them) during the Mexican-American War. Others used Westward Expansion as a pretense to slaughter Indigenous Tribal Nations. Many still supported slavery to build their own prosperity on the backs of Black people. The Transcendentals who spoke out and made moves against these sins would find themselves in the crosshairs of their peers who wished to dominate society.

These divisions would fuel the spite and greed that drove the Civil War.

How They’re Misunderstood

This generation was born into a time when anti-French sentiment was strong as France attempted to extort money from America. Thomas Jefferson laid the groundwork for what would become known as Manifest Destiny — which was what Transcendental kids grew up being taught.

As War Hawks within the Democratic-Republican Party pressured Madison to ignite the War of 1812 against England, anti-British sentiment rebounded. During the Transcendentals’ young adulthood, they absorbed the core belief of the Monroe Doctrine that Americans were entitled to keep all European countries out of the Western Hemisphere. Jackson’s rise in popularity fueled even more anti-British, anti-Spanish, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous hatred as he rode a wave to victory in 1828. The newly-formed Jacksonian Democrats pounded this into the electorate’s head as the old Democratic-Republican Party dissolved.

Transcendentals aged further into adulthood while the actions of Henry Clay, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and Zachary Taylor caused the Whig Party to implode. This, combined with President James Knox Polk’s mishandling of the Mexican-American War, led to the modern dichotomy we now see between Democrats and Republicans in the Twenty-First Century.

During their fifties and sixties, this generation watched the Civil War rage. Thus, the golden years of Transcendentals were marred by President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment. Klansmen, Carpetbaggers, and other sectarians tore the nation apart as the Reconstruction Era resulted in Jim Crow laws and more Indigenous genocide.

Why They Matter

Four American presidents were Transcendentals: Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson.

These guys were born and raised during the age of Thomas Jefferson, when this Shadwell-born Founding Father defeated barbary pirates in the Mediterranean. For them and their peers, their upbringing was rooted in imperialism. So much decision-making was based on expedience, gluttony, materialism, and taking the path of least resistance.

Transcendentals amongst the hoi polloi and laborer classes valued progress — but they rarely received what they craved.

The Transcendentals who’d go on to lead the country were a mixed bag. Fillmore put the final nail in the Whig Party’s coffin by favoring the Compromise of 1850. But he opened up trade with Japan and, consequently, the rest of the Far East.

Pierce oversaw the Gadsden Purchase, which helped to infuse more Mestizo and Chicano influences into American culture. But he kicked the can by resting his laurels on the ill-fated Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Lincoln mainstreamed abolitionism, inspiring more White people to make racial justice a priority. But he also supported wartime censorship of journalists — which later led to President Ulysses S. Grant’s embrace of the Comstock laws.

Johnson, impeached in disgrace, ushered in a new era of Jim Crow (via expanding the “black codes”) under the guise of national unity. His incompetence further fractured already-delicate tensions between Republicans and Democrats.

This generation mostly died during Reconstruction — or, prematurely, during the Civil War itself. At the end of their lives, Transcendentals largely looked back at what a mess had been left in their wake.

The Transcendental generation was truly one embodied by the restless following the indecisive. They were born and raised battling outside forces. These trials, regrettably, taught them to battle each other.

As with every main generational cohort, Transcendentals were surrounded by two distinct “microgenerations.”

The “Defiant Giants” (born approximately from 1794 to 1798) melded the oldest Transcendentals with the youngest members of the “Unimpressionist” generation. They continued to push back against British adversaries even as the newly-christened United States gained a stronger foothold in the North American continent.

This microgeneration brandished personalities as headstrong as those belonging to James Knox Polk, Cornelius Vanderbilt, William Apess, Matthew C. Perry, and Samuel Cornish.

“Prospectors” (born approximately between 1811 and 1815) merged together the oldest members of the Redeemer generation with the youngest Transcendentals. They escalated the California Gold Rush along with increased Westward Expansion for homesteaders, even as they elected to follow divergent paths redefining morality or negotiation.

This microgeneration featured historical figures including the likes of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Jacobs, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, Horace Wells, and Charles Lewis Tiffany.

Some of the Transcendentals who’ve made the greatest impact on the American psyche include Abraham Lincoln, Edgar Allen Poe, Nat Turner, Dorothea Dix, and William Lloyd Garrison.

A list of historical figures who were members of the Transcendental cohort:

Click here to subscribe to my stories.