James Biddle Eustis (August 27, 1834 – September 9, 1899)[1] was a United States senator from Louisiana who served as President Cleveland's ambassador to France.

[2] While a sitting senator, Eustis wrote a controversial essay for The Forum titled "Race Antagonism in the South," in which he complained that "The white man's patience is to-day taxed as ever by the unending complaints of the Negro and his friends" and that Blacks "continue to appeal to what he considers the inexhaustible sympathies of the white race" despite having "every advantage over every other laboring class in the world.

"[4] If his lot is to continue to be one of inferiority, rather than appeal to the political favoritism of the federal government, or to the partisan sympathies of Northern philanthropists, as he has done in the past, he should rely implicitly upon the magnanimity of his white fellow-citizens of the South, to treat him with the justice and generosity due to his unfortunate condition.

[4]The essay prompted vigorous responses from supporters of civil rights, including George Washington Cable, Albion Winegar Tourgée, Atticus Greene Haygood, and others.

[18] Through his daughter Celestine, he was posthumously a grandfather of diplomat Charles Bohlen (1904–1974), who served as the United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union, the Philippines and France.