Robert Lowry (governor)

Robert Lowry
32nd Governor of Mississippi
In office January 2, 1882 – January 13, 1890
Lieutenant	G. D. Shands
Preceded by	John Marshall Stone
Succeeded by	John Marshall Stone
Personal details
Born	March 10, 1830 South Carolina, U.S.
Died	January 19, 1910 (aged 79)
Political party	Democratic

Robert Lowry (March 10, 1830 – January 19, 1910) was an American politician.

Lowry was born in South Carolina and raised in Mississippi. During the American Civil War he rose from the rank of private to that of brigadier general in the Confederate States Army.^[1] At the Battle of Shiloh Major Lowry commanded the Sixth Mississippi regiment which suffered very heavy casualties and he was wounded himself.^[2] He was the Confederate military leader who is credited with putting down the local uprising of citizens near Jones County, Mississippi who failed to be loyal rebels.^[3] When the war was over, he returned to the practice of law at Brandon. Lowry briefly served in the state senate after the war (1865–1866). Massive fraud in the gubernatorial election of 1881 resulted in the election of the subject over the Independent People's Party candidate, Benjamin King.^[4]

Between 1882 and 1890 he was the Democratic governor of Mississippi, serving two four-year terms. He could be called a Bourbon Democrat. The Farmers' Alliance movement continued to show local action in Yazoo County and in most areas of the state.^[5] Governor Lowry called out the state militia to keep the peace in Leflore County at the end of his term of office.^[6] Political activity related to peonage and racial discrimination in the Mississippi delta and other areas of the state led to violence during his term of office.^[7] Rapid industrial development occurred during his administration as well as the founding of the first state-supported women's college at Columbus.^[8]

Lowry was related to J. A. W. Lowry, a lawyer and politician in Bossier Parish in northwestern Louisiana.^[9]

See also

• List of American Civil War generals (Confederate)

Notes

1. Eicher, p. 355.
2. Duval, Mary V. (1887). The Students' History of Mississippi. Louisville,KY: The Courier-Journal. p. 203.
3. Coppock, Paul R. (3 February 1980). "Lowry Brand of Bourbon". Commercial-Appeal (Memphis)
4. Cresswell, Stephen Edward (1995). Multiparty Politics in Mississippi, 1877-1902. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. p. 200. ISBN 0878057706.
5. (1888 November 15). "Board of Supervisors" Yazoo Sentinel (Yazoo City, MS).
6. Holmes,William F. (3rd Quarter 1973), "The Leflore County Massacre and the Demise of the Colored Farmers Alliance", Phylon (Atlanta: Clark University) 34: 267
7. (1889 September 19)."More Race Troubles". Clarion Ledger(Jackson, MS).
8. http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/265/index.php?s=extra&id=134 Accessed July 31, 2012
9. ""John A. W. Lowry of Bossier Parish, Louisiana" in Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana". Chicago and Nashville, Tennessee: Southern Publishing Company. 1890. Retrieved March 23, 2015.

References

• Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-8047-3641-1.
• Sifakis, Stewart. Who Was Who in the Civil War. New York: Facts On File, 1988. ISBN 978-0-8160-1055-4.
• Warner, Ezra J. Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959. ISBN 978-0-8071-0823-9.