The Republican Generation
1742–1766
“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates, and men decay.”
Oliver Goldsmith, 1770
The Republican Generation’s childhood and youth were marked by imperial conflict, especially the French and Indian War of 1754–1763, whose aftermath helped generate disputes over frontier policy, taxation, and imperial costs. By young adulthood, this cohort became the institutional generation of the American and Atlantic revolutions: Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and many others who converted revolutionary ideology into republican constitutions, parties, offices, and laws.