You wouldn't like the 19th Century if you have the temperament of a sheep, needing and wanting a master. The 19th Century would suit me, regardless of the inferior health care, and other things. The major thinkers that built America were from the 19th Century, including our automobiles, farm machinery, aircraft , electricity, mass production, space program, liberties, and affluence. They either made it happen, or seeded it so it would happen. Technologically, we live what they dreamed.
The school systems then turned out critical thinkers, good citizens, and competent educated men and women. A 19th Century education was not an indoctrination process like today, but gave each student a functional education that taught them arts and sciences as well as the basics. Check out what people learned in the 8th grade then, which was closer to our current high school studies of today. The critical thinking then trumps the social propaganda of today.
Current day "politically correct" history revisionists are like cats in a litter box trying to bury everything good about American history, concocting useful lies, and seeking to amplify harmful truths. Whatever you're taught in school about America today, take it with a grain of salt because it most likely feeds a current agenda, and distorts the truth.
During the 19th Century what you earned was yours, opportunity without government interference was common. You could travel across thousands of miles of beautiful unspoiled land.
Of course I wasn't alive then, but I knew many of the old timers, from the 19th Century, homesteaders, farmers, mill workers, scientists, soldiers, teachers, and others. The history revisionists may fool young generations, but not me, because I was born in 1934, They told me about mining for gold, fighting in WWI, and living through the Great Depression.
Things are bad today, and I'm glad that I'm old because maybe I'll be gone before they pull America down. "Mightier Empires Have Fallen."