Bowers, Claude Gernade

Related Category: Historians, U.S.: Biographies

(zhərnäd´ bou´ərz), 1878–1958, American journalist, historian, and diplomat, b. Hamilton co., Ind. After serving as editor of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette (1917–23), Bowers, as editorial writer on the New York World (1923–31) and political columnist on the New York Journal (1931–33), was an influential spokesman for the Democratic party. Ambassador to Spain (1933–39), Bowers remained in Madrid throughout the Spanish civil war and tried to get the Roosevelt administration to support the Spanish Republicans. He then served (1939–53) as ambassador to Chile. Though much of his historical writing is vigorous, well written, and deservedly popular, it is frankly partisan, further praising or reappraising favorably the characters and accomplishments of Democratic leaders in the past, e.g., The Party Battles of the Jackson Period (1922, repr. 1965), Jefferson and Hamilton (1925), The Tragic Era (1929), a now discredited anti-Republican view of Reconstruction built on the principle that political order could be restored only on the basis of racial inequality, Jefferson in Power (1936), and The Young Jefferson, 1743–1789 (1945, repr. 1969).

See his autobiographical My Mission to Spain (1954) and Chile through Embassy Windows (1958) and his memoirs, My Life (1962).