Claude Gernade Bowers (November 20, 1878 – January 21, 1958) was a newspaper columnist and editor, author of best-selling books on American history, Democratic Party politician, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's ambassador to Spain (1933–1939) and Chile (1939–1953).
When it soon became clear that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, in violation of the Agreement, were openly helping the Nationalist rebels, he unsuccessfully pressed Washington to aid the government of the Spanish Republic.
He left Spain when it became clear, in early 1939, that the rebels, led by the dictator Francisco Franco, had won the war.
In domestic affairs he considered himself a staunch Jeffersonian, and was increasingly dismayed at the New Deal interventions into the economy, but kept quiet about it.
It was there that he became friends with Eugene V. Debs, head of the Socialist Party of America and repeated candidate for president and other offices on its "ticket".
[6]: 250 Kern was defeated in the 1916 election, and Bowers returned to Indiana and accepted a position at the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette.
[8]: 98–99 His book The Party Battles of the Jackson Period (1922) was well received, and led to a 1923 invitation, which he accepted, to join the editorial staff of the influential New York World,[8]: 99 the nation's leading Democratic newspaper.
[12]: 29 [17] While in Spain, where he was enormously popular as U.S. ambassador, and "established a reputation as 'a careful, painstaking executive,'"[6]: 257 he continued to play an active role in the Democratic Party, as speechwriter, advisor, and publicist.
When the Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936, he at first recommended support for the non-intervention policies that were agreed to by all the European powers.
However, Germany and Italy openly violated that policy, and he switched and called on Washington, unsuccessfully, to help the Republic.
In his memoir, My Mission to Spain (1954), he was highly critical of fascist agitation and strongly defended the Republic.
[20] The 1939 victory of the Nationalists, led by Francisco Franco, made Bowers's position untenable, and he was recalled from Spain.
"[12]: 26 Although disillusioned when Roosevelt's New Deal veered the country away from pristine low-budget Jeffersonian principles, Bowers held his tongue and never criticized his patron.
[21] Without a college education, he did not write innovative scholarship, and he shows no knowledge of the scholarly journals containing historical research.
[6]: 261 He was "an historian of crisis, choosing his themes from the 'critical periods' of history: the triumph of democracy over aristocracy in the Jackson period, the epochal conflict of Jefferson and Hamilton, the retrograde decade after the Civil War, the election and administrations of Jefferson, and an act from the French drama of 1789.
But "a more restrained style, more pro and con in the discussion of problems and men, and fewer unqualified opinions would vastly improve the works of this near-brilliant author."
Hamilton worked on behalf of financial speculators, including at least two dozen members of Congress, to fund depreciated debts at their full face value (to their substantial benefit and the substantial loss of the original holders of the debts), and to establish a national bank on the same basis.
After their humiliating defeat in the 1924 elections Democrats "began to pray for 'another Thomas Jefferson' to put Humpty Dumpty together again ... [In Bowers's book they found] the myth of the Democratic party masterfully recreated, ... an ideology with which they might make sense of the too often senseless conflicts of the present.
"[26][25] Ex-Indiana Senator Albert J. Beveridge wrote a very long review of Jefferson and Hamilton, calling it "captivating".
He "expressed pride when southern segregationists used the book to oppose civil rights legislation a quarter century later.
[31]: 48 Never have American public men in responsible positions, directing the destiny of the Nation, been so brutal, hypocritical, and corrupt.
[31]: v But for the suggestions of soldiers and agitators, the former masters and slaves might easily have effected a social readjustment to their mutual benefit, but this was not the game intended.
[31]: 49 The Tragic Era was a regular selection of the Literary Guild book club, and went through 13 printings before it was reissued in paperback.
They must of course, understand the desirability of unbiased accounts, balanced narratives, and presentations of truth for its own sake, but evidently these seemingly indispensable qualities of historical writing have been considered as secondary.