JIGSAW GENS

Unimpressionists — A Legacy of Self-Actualization & Dissent

The Unimpressionists (“Rough Cuts” or “Stabilizers”) forged a no-nonsense approach to a new American identity

To promote intergenerational literacy, the first phase of my “Jigsaw Gens” project offered glimpses at the eight main American generations in modern history: Hemingrebels, GI-Gens, Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, GenXers, Millennials, Zoomers, and Alphas.

Prior to the Hemingrebels, there have been five pre-1884 generations I’ve additionally identified and described: Missionaries, Stowegressives, Golden Renegades, Redeemers, and Transcendentals.

So who came before the Transcendentals?

It’s a cohort of Americans from the newly-liberated United States whom I dub the “Unimpressionists.”

Who They Are

Unimpressionists were born approximately between 1781 to 1793 — give or take a few years on either end. They inhabit a younger tier of “the Compromise Generation” that’s been designated by historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, symbolizing the “artist” archetype. This generation was the first one born once the Revolutionary War had ended, in the short-term aftermath of America’s Declaration of Independence being signed.

These kids grew up in the infancy of America’s founding as a nation. I call them “Unimpressionists” as sort of a double meaning. First, they were born and raised whilst American tensions with the French intensified (alongside those that lingered with the British). Within the next half-decade, France would shepherd in the Impressionist movement based on Claude Monet’s art as a rebuttal to traditional artwork. But, in addition to being at odds with French leaders, this generation in America was laser-focused on creating a new standard for traditions unique to the United States. They were thoroughly “unimpressed” with outside forces who sought to create detours from that goal.

Other nicknames for Unimpressionists could include: Rough Cuts, in order to pay tribute to how their generation would witness the earliest forms of film development, such as phantasmagoria (or “lantern shows”) during their youth; Stabilizers, since they refined and gave more concrete direction to the raw tenets of democracy paved by the Madisonian generation (“Compromisers”) who came before them; Mixed Signals, because of how they were heavily pressured to live up to the reputations of America’s founding generations — specifically, “Madisonians,” “Goodpublicans,” and “Liberty Lords”; Privateers, seeing how ample Unimpressionists went on to battle maritime war vessels of the same name (“privateers”) during their young adulthood, essentially becoming privatized renegades for American exceptionalism; or Know-Somethings, in reference to this generation’s role in the contentious elections of the 1820s and 1830s, which were the two decades with self-assured factionalization that gave rise to the Know-Nothing movement of the 1840s and 1850s.

These nicknames represent the challenges faced by those whose childhoods and adolescences spanned the presidencies of George Washington and John Adams…as well as the conflicts this generation would induce that reverberated across the rest of the Nineteenth Century.

What They Went Through

Born as the dust from the American Revolution was beginning to settle, Unimpressionists had a front row seat to Washington’s presidency. Their parents and grandparents told them stories of participating in the Whiskey Rebellion. They came-of-age as President Thomas Jefferson defeated barbary pirates in the Mediterranean.

By the time President James Madison was pushed into the War of 1812, members of this generation were young adults. Many of them sacrificed their lives for that cause up until the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. Having grown older, surviving Unimpressionists got a brief reprieve during the Era of Good Feelings ushered in by President James Monroe. But it was only a matter of time before struggles over tariffs during the late-1820s and early-1830s forced them to take sides against their own countrymen.

These psychological jolts must have been disheartening. Approaching their golden years, some of the Unimpressionists decided to join their own Transcendental, Redeemer, and Golden Renegade kids by moving westward to settle the Great Plains and Pacific coast. Toward the ends of their lives, they saw the Oregon Treaty signed as the Mexican-American War began to flare.

How They’re Misunderstood

Much like the Transcendentals who would follow them, Unimpressionists lived a life of political whiplash.

During their childhoods, they bore witness to Alexander Hamilton forming the Federalist Party while Jefferson and Madison (the latter having risen to prominence via the 1787 Constitutional Convention) organized the Democratic-Republicans. Washington’s successor, President John Adams, became the first one-term president due to Federalists revolting against their own political party.

These shifting allegiances were followed by even more warfare against the British alongside of continued tensions with the French. Entering middle age, Unimpressionists lashed out against foreign powers by backing the Monroe Doctrine. The American electorate ran hot-and-cold on President John Quincy Adams before growing attached to the rugged strut of President Andrew Jackson.

Then, the Jacksonian era saw the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans displaced by the Whigs and the new Jacksonian-style Democrats. Following Jackson’s retirement, American politics continued to zig and zag. The Panic of 1837 shook the nation. Texas was added to the Union. Slavery continued to persist, but citizens from both sides were getting tired of indecisive compromises on the issue.

Finally, the Whig Party perished. Meanwhile, more and more of the Unimpressionists began to die of natural causes while observing what appeared to be a country about to burst apart at the seams.

Why They Matter

Just as the Transcendental generation did, the preceding Unimpressionist generation spawned four U.S. Presidents: Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and James Buchanan.

From birth, Unimpressionists were raised with a romanticized view of George Washington. The youngest of their cohort were born in 1781, the year he defeated Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown — officially ending the horrors of the Revolutionary War. They grew up in a time when his gift of inspiring people was revered; so, naturally, their generation turned skeptical of Washington’s successors who tried to emulate him.

They also largely admired Washington’s decision to forgo running for a third term in 1797 (as well as Jefferson following this example in 1809). When Washington died in 1799, it was surely a debilitating blow to the American psyche.

In fact, this generation saw three additional presidents die on the Fourth of July — Monroe in 1831, and, before that, Jefferson and the senior Adams, both in 1826.

Was it a coincidence that the second, third, and fifth American presidents each died on Independence Day? Or was it a cosmic cackle, subliminally taunting these middle-aged adults?

Unimpressionists, while navigating childhood and adolescence, witnessed several events symbolizing the idea of American exceptionalism…

John Adams erecting the U.S. Navy in response to France’s extortion.

The U.S. Capitol moving from Philadelphia to Washington D.C.

The Louisiana Purchase setting the stage for Westward Expansion.

Upon reaching adulthood, they endured warfare followed by a peaceful reprieve followed by economic disasters. As the American government acquired more territories from Spain, the Seminole Wars and the Trail of Tears claimed the lives of Indigenous tribes.

Approaching death, Unimpressionists watched Texans (both Anglo and Tejano) battle Santa Anna’s Mexican forces over slavery. Presidents Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce, along with Buchanan, made compromises that infuriated abolitionists and secessionists alike. From coast to coast, Americans were viciously at each other’s throats.

Elderly Unimpressionists took their final breaths — well…still quite unimpressed even as they headed toward the afterlife.

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

The “Liberty Babes” (born approximately from 1776 to 1780) boasted children who were conceived on the threshold of when the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. They included the oldest Unimpressionists alongside of the youngest Americans from the “Madisonian” generation. Liberty Babes appreciated the foundation for democracy built by their elders; yet, they were eager to get their feet wet in terms of figuring out how to sustain that.

This microgeneration is represented by the historical avatars reflected in Americans such as Henry Clay Sr., Zebulon Pike, Clement Clarke Moore, Stephen Decatur, and Mary Young Pickersgill.

The “Defiant Giants” (born approximately between 1794 and 1798) straddled the blurry cusp between the oldest Transcendentals and the youngest Unimpressionists. They valued the newborn ideals of developing a distinct and proud identity for the United States, but they also gave us a fiery preview of the moral fray over racial subjugation and gender personhood that Transcendentals, Redeemers, and Golden Renegades would refine leading up to (and sustaining beyond) the Civil War.

This microgeneration was embodied by firebrands and effectuators as accomplished as Sojourner Truth, Charles Wilkes, Johns Hopkins, William H. Prescott, and Horace Mann.

Some of the Unimpressionists most emblematic of their generation’s fighting spirit have been Davy Crockett, Washington Irving, Sacagawea, John James Audubon, and Lowell Mason.

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

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