BOWLES, SAMUEL (1826–1878), American journalist, was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on the 9th of February 1826. He was the son of Samuel Bowles (1779–1851) of the same city, who had established the weekly Springfield Republican in 1824. The daily issue was begun in 1844, as an evening newspaper, afterwards becoming a morning journal. To its service Samuel Bowles, junior, devoted his life (with the exception of a brief period during which he was in charge of a daily in Boston), and he gave the paper a national reputation by the vigour, incisiveness and independence of its editorial utterances, and the concise and convenient arrangement of its local and general news-matter. During the controversies affecting slavery and resulting in the Civil War, Bowles supported, in general, the Whig and Republican parties, but in the period of Reconstruction under President Grant his paper represented anti-administration or “Liberal Republican” opinions, while in the disputed election of 1876 it favoured the claims of Tilden, and subsequently became independent in politics. Bowles died at Springfield on the 16th of January 1878. During his lifetime, and subsequently, the Republican office was a sort of school for young journalists, especially in the matter of pungency and conciseness of style, one of his maxims being “put it all in the first paragraph.” Bowles published two books of travel, Across the Continent (1865) and The Switzerland of America (1869), which were combined into one volume under the title Our New West (1869). He was succeeded as publisher and editor-in-chief of the Republican by his son Samuel Bowles (b. 1851).
A eulogistic Life and Times of Samuel Bowles (2 vols., New York, 1885), by George S. Merriam, is virtually a history of American political movements after the compromise of 1850.