Try "The Civil War." That is a much better place to start. All the particulars were in place; Wealthy, Liberal power blocks trying to force their morality on everyone else and use the power of government to do it.
Others have pointed out that Progressivism started with the Puritans in Massachusetts, who were also arrogant and insistent that everyone conform to their moral opinions.
But for our modern understanding of the phenomena, the Civil War is a better point from which to project it's origin.
Care to expand on what morality was being forced on others during the Civil War, and how it kicked off the Progressive Era?
There’s a huge delta between bad policies and ideological drive.
There’s plenty of bad policies during the civil war, but there is no drumbeat during that time period that aims at big government simply for the existence of big government. That’s all progressivism, and doesn’t appear until the age of Theodore and Woodrow at the turn of the century.