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). 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. Bowers was a sharp critic of Republicans and their Reconstruction policies for African American voting rights and civil rights. Bowers was ambassador to Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). At first he recommended the United States join other nations in a Non-intervention Agreement. 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. Later that year, he became U.S. Ambassador to Chile, which had a leftist government more to his liking. 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. Three of Bower's books were genuine best-sellers, "but he is little remembered today except by political historians". Biography Bowers was the son of a small-time Indiana shopkeeper, Lewis Bowers, who died when he was 12. His mother, Juliet Tipton Bowers, moved to Indianapolis, and Bowers graduated from Shortridge High School there in 1898. He was a voracious reader: "Irish oratory, English poetry, and history of all kinds were his favorite study." He demonstrated "intellectual excitement". He was a champion debater, "when debate was more important than basketball", and won the Indiana State High School Oratorical Contest with a speech on "Hamilton the Constructionist." Finances made college impossible; even high school (not dropping out of school to work) had been a financial challenge. Beyond high school, Bowers was self-taught. He began his career in 1901 as a journalist writing editorials for the Indianapolis Sentinel, "filling in for a friend who wanted to go fishing". He worked as reporter and editorial writer for a variety of Indiana newspapers. In 1903 Bowers left Indianapolis to work for the Terre Haute Gazette, and then moved to the Terre Haute Star as editorial