Claude Bowers

Claude Bowers


United States Ambassador to Chile
In office September 7, 1939 – September 2, 1953
President	Franklin D. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower
Preceded by	Norman Armour
Succeeded by	Willard L. Beaulac
United States Ambassador to Spain
In office June 1, 1933 – February 2, 1939
President	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded by	Irwin B. Laughlin
Succeeded by	H. Freeman Matthews (Acting)

Personal details
Born	Claude Gernade Bowers (1878-11-20)November 20, 1878 Westfield, Indiana, U.S.
Died	January 21, 1958(1958-01-21) (aged 79) New York City, New York, U.S.
Political party	Democratic

Claude Gernade Bowers (November 20, 1878 in Westfield, Indiana – January 21, 1958 in New York City) was an American historian, Democratic Party politician, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's ambassador to Spain (1933-1939) and Chile (1939-1953).^[1] His histories of the Democratic Party in its formative years from the 1790s to the 1830s helped shape the party's self-image as a powerful force against monopoly and privilege. As ambassador he worked to keep the United States out of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39.

Biography

Bowers began his career as a journalist with a newspaper in Terre Haute, Indiana. While residing there, he became the Democratic candidate for the US House of Representatives, at the request of powerful Democratic leader John Edward Lamb. Though he lost, the experience polished his abundant speaking skills.

Bowers's enormously popular books Party Battles of the Jackson Period (1922) and Jefferson and Hamilton: The Struggle for Democracy in America (1925) were political manifestos that denounced the Federalist Party, the Whig Party, and the Republican Party, as bastions of aristocracy, and hailed the Democrats as true heroes. Bowers was an editorial writer for the New York World from 1923 to 1931, and a political columnist for the New York Journal from 1931 to 1933.^[2]

In his very popular histories, he promoted the idea that Thomas Jefferson had founded the Democratic Party. President Franklin Roosevelt, an avid reader of Bowers was impressed enough to build the Jefferson Memorial and appoint him the US ambassador to Spain in 1933. Bowers's The Tragic Era (1929) attracted wide attention for its attack on the Republican Party, which Bowers believed humiliated the South and corrupted the North during Reconstruction. His work popularized the Dunning School, which "provided an intellectual foundation for the system of segregation and black disenfranchisement that followed Reconstruction."^[3] He was the temporary chairman of the 1928 Democratic National Convention where he gave a keynote speech.^[4] Roosevelt appointed him ambassador to Spain and later Chile.

Although disillusioned when the New Deal veered the country away from pristine low-budget Jeffersonian principles, Bowers held his tongue and never criticized his patron. His biography of Senator Albert J. Beveridge, Beveridge and the Progressive Era (1932), was non-polemical and of high quality. He continued writing late into his life, completing My Mission to Spain in 1954, which chronicled his time in Spain as ambassador, covering both his travels throughout the country, and the hectic politics that foreshadowed the Spanish Civil War. Bowers was highly critical of what he saw as fascist agitation and strongly defended the regime of the Spanish Second Republic.^[5]

He died of leukemia in 1958 and is buried at Highland Lawn Cemetery in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Bibliography

Bowers, Claude (1962), MY LIFE THE MEMOIRS OF CLAUDE BOWERS, Simon and Schuster, New York, E'book

References

↑ digitalcommons.unl.edu
↑ Thomas T. Spencer, "'Old' Democrats and New Deal Politics: Claude G. Bowers, James A. Farley, and the Changing Democratic Party, 1933-1940" Indiana Magazine of History (1996) 92#1 pp: 26-45. in JSTOR
↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/opinion/sunday/why-reconstruction-matters.html?_r=0
↑ Text in New York Times June 27, 1928. p. 8
↑ Spencer, "'Old' Democrats and New Deal Politics: Claude G. Bowers, James A. Farley, and the Changing Democratic Party, 1933-1940"

Books by Bowers

The Irish Orators: A History of Ireland's Fight for Freedom (PDF) (1916)
The Life of John Worth Kern (PDF) (1918)
The Party Battles of the Jackson Period (1922)
Jefferson and Hamilton: The Struggle for Democracy in America (1925)
The Tragic Era: The Revolution after Lincoln (1929) at Internet Archives
Beveridge and the Progressive Era (1932)
Jefferson in Power: The Death Struggle of the Federalists (1936)
The Spanish Adventures of Washington Irving (1940)
The Young Jefferson, 1743-1789 (1945)
Pierre Vergniaud: Voice of the French Revolution (1950)
My Mission to Spain: Watching the Rehearsal for World War II (1954) Simon and Schuster New York at Internet Archives
Chile Through Embassy Windows, 1939-1953 (1958)
My Life: The Memoirs of Claude Bowers (1962).
Indianapolis in the 'Gay Nineties': High School Diaries of Claude G. Bowers edited by Holman Hamilton and Gayle Thornbrough, (1964)

Scholarly studies

Merrill D. Peterson. The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (1998). partly online
Peter J. Sehlinger and Holman Hamilton. Spokesman for Democracy: Claude G. Bowers, 1878-1958 (2000).
Spencer, Thomas T. "'Old' Democrats and New Deal Politics: Claude G. Bowers, James A. Farley, and the Changing Democratic Party, 1933-1940" Indiana Magazine of History 1996 92(1): 26-45. in JSTOR
Taylor, F. Jay. The United States and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. 1956, 1971, Introduction by Bowers.

External links

Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame - Claude G. Bowers

Party political offices
Preceded by Pat Harrison	Keynote Speaker of the Democratic National Convention 1928	Succeeded by Alben W. Barkley
Diplomatic posts
Preceded by Irwin B. Laughlin	United States Ambassador to Spain 1933–1939	Succeeded by H. Freeman Matthews Acting
Preceded by Norman Armour	United States Ambassador to Chile 1939–1953	Succeeded by Willard L. Beaulac

Reconstruction Era

Participants

Federal government	Presidents Abraham Lincoln Andrew Johnson Ulysses S. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes Congress 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 Radical Republicans African-American Senators African-American Representatives Reconstruction Amendments United States Congress Joint Committee on Reconstruction Federal judiciary Taney Court Chase Court Waite Court Federal bureaucracy Edwin Stanton Freedmen's Bureau Justice Department
State governments	Southern United States Confederate States of America
Others	African-Americans Freedman Free people of color Carpetbaggers Ku Klux Klan Scalawag Redeemers White League Red Shirts Democratic Party Bourbon Democrat Horatio Seymour Samuel J. Tilden Republican Party Stalwart Charles Sumner Thaddeus Stevens Lyman Trumbull Benjamin Wade John Bingham James Mitchell Ashley Freedman's Savings Bank

Timeline

Prelude	American Indian Wars Slavery in the United States A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) The Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women (1838) Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1839) Seneca Falls Convention (1848) National Women's Rights Convention (1850) American Civil War Confiscation Act of 1861 Confiscation Act of 1862 District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act (1862) Militia Act of 1862
1863	Emancipation Proclamation General Order No. 143 Lincoln's presidential Reconstruction Ten Percent Plan National Bank Act Women's Loyal National League New York City draft riots
1864	Wade–Davis Bill 1864 National Union National Convention 1864 Democratic National Convention United States presidential election, 1864
1865	13th Amendment Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address Black Codes Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15 Freedmen's Bureau Freedmen's Bureau bills Confederates surrender at Appomattox Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Shaw University New Departure 1865 State of the Union Address Ku Klux Klan
1866	Civil Rights Act of 1866 Memphis riots of 1866 New Orleans riot Swing Around the Circle Southern Homestead Act of 1866 Cherokee Reconstruction Treaty of 1866 Choctaw and Chickasaw Treaty of Washington of 1866 Tennessee readmitted to Union Petition for Universal Freedom National Labor Union United States House of Representatives elections, 1866 United States Senate elections, 1866 Ex parte Garland Ex parte Milligan Slave Kidnapping Act of 1866
1867	Command of the Army Act Tenure of Office Act Indian Peace Commission Knights of the White Camelia Pulaski riot Reconstruction Acts Constitutional conventions of 1867 Habeas Corpus Act 1867 Peonage Act of 1867
1868	14th Amendment Impeachment of Andrew Johnson Arkansas readmitted to Union Florida readmitted to Union North Carolina readmitted to Union South Carolina readmitted to Union Louisiana readmitted to Union Alabama readmitted to Union 1868 Democratic National Convention 1868 Republican National Convention United States presidential election, 1868 Opelousas massacre Fourth Reconstruction Act Georgia v. Stanton St. Landry riot of 1868
1869	National Woman Suffrage Association American Woman Suffrage Association Alabama Claims Annexation of Santo Domingo Board of Indian Commissioners Public Credit Act of 1869 Black Friday (1869) Ex parte McCardle First Transcontinental Railroad
1870	15th Amendment Enforcement Act of 1870 Justice Department Naturalization Act of 1870 Kirk-Holden War Shoffner Act
1871	Ku Klux Klan hearings First Enforcement Act of 1871 Second Enforcement Act of 1871 Alcorn State University Meridian race riot of 1871 Treaty of Washington New York custom house ring Civil service commission United States expedition to Korea
1872	General Mining Act of 1872 Crédit Mobilier Scandal 1872 Democratic National Convention 1872 Republican National Convention United States presidential election, 1872 Modoc War Star route scandal Salary Grab Act Amnesty Act
1873	Panic of 1873 Colfax Massacre Timber Culture Act Slaughter-House Cases Virginius Affair Coinage Act of 1873 Long Depression Comstock laws
1874	Brooks–Baxter War Battle of Liberty Place Coushatta Massacre Red River War Timber Culture Act White League Election Riot of 1874 Vicksburg Riot of 1874 Black Hills Gold Rush Sanborn incident Anti-Moiety Acts
1875	United States v. Cruikshank Civil Rights Act of 1875 Red Shirts Mississippi Plan Clifton Riot of 1875 Yazoo City Riot of 1875 Specie Payment Resumption Act Whiskey Ring Wheeler Compromise Delano affair Pratt & Boyd
1876	Hamburg Massacre South Carolina civil disturbances of 1876 1876 Republican National Convention 1876 Democratic National Convention Disputed presidential election of 1876 Ellenton Riot of 1876 Great Sioux War of 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn United States v. Reese Trader post scandal Centennial Exposition Cattellism Safe burglary conspiracy
1877	Electoral Commission Compromise of 1877 Nez Perce War Desert Land Act Great Railroad Strike of 1877
Aftermath	Posse Comitatus Act (1878) Civil Rights Cases (1883) United States v. Harris (1883) Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) Williams v. Mississippi (1898) Giles v. Harris (1903) Disenfranchisement

Aspects

Historiography	Bibliography of the Reconstruction Era James Shepherd Pike The Prostrate State (1874) James Bryce The American Commonwealth (1888) Claude Bowers The Tragic Era (1929) Columbia University John Burgess Walter Lynwood Fleming Dunning School Charles A. Beard Howard K. Beale W. E. B. Du Bois Black Reconstruction (1935) C. Vann Woodward Joel Williamson William R. Brock American Crisis (1963) John Hope Franklin From Slavery to Freedom (1947) After Slavery (1965) Leon Litwack Been in the Storm So Long (1979) Eric Foner Reconstruction (1988) Kenneth M. Stampp Steven Hahn A Nation under Our Feet (2003)
Memory	Winslow Homer A Visit from the Old Mistress (1876) Thomas Dixon, Jr. The Leopard's Spots (1902) The Clansman (1905) D. W. Griffith The Birth of a Nation (1915) United Daughters of the Confederacy Gone with the Wind (1939) David W. Blight Race and Reunion (2001)
Legacy	Women's suffrage in the United States Labor history of the United States Gilded Age Jim Crow Era Civil Rights Movement American frontier
Other topics	History of the United States (1865–1918) Industrialization Suffrage Habeas corpus Race (human classification) White supremacy Paramilitary Forty acres and a mule Reconstruction Treaties Whitecapping

Category

Ambassadors of the United States to Chile

Authority control	WorldCat Identities VIAF: 77246932 LCCN: n50042822 ISNI: 0000 0001 0918 2208 GND: 124395473 SUDOC: 034091467 BNF: cb12488298t (data) IATH: w6vq3558

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