Francis Bowen
Francis Bowen (1811-1890) was born on September 8, 1811, in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He would receive his education at the Mayhew School in Boston. In 1829, he would be admitted into Phillips Exeter Academy. He would then enter Harvard University in the following year and would graduate three years later in 1833. Bowen would then return to Phillips Exeter Academy, this time as a mathematics teacher, before being invited back to Harvard two years later to teach intellectual philosophy. Bowen would remain in this position until 1839. He would then travel to Europe for a brief period of time, before returning in 1841. The following year, Bowen would purchase a stake in the North American Review and would become an editor alongside fellow protectionist Alexander Everett.
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Bowen would be invited back to Harvard in 1850 and would commence teaching prior to being confirmed by the university board. He would be subsequently denied this position, however, because of a series of politically contentious articles which appeared in the North American Review. Bowen would eventually return in 1853, with a new and more favorable President having been appointed to Harvard. Bowen would be appointed as the Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity. Bowen would also begin teaching the first dedicated course on political economy ever offered at Harvard.
Although sympathetic to Adam Smith, Bowen refused to use an English Classical text in his course on political economy. Hence, in 1856, Bowen produced his first textbook entitled The Principles of Political Economy. In this work, Bowen attempted to demonstrate how the doctrines of “Adam Smith upon free trade, of Malthus upon population, [and] of Ricardo upon rent and profits” are “indefensible.” In their place, Bowen sought “to lay down the foundations… of an American System of Political Economy.” Bowen’s Principles would go through several editions and would later be revised and retitled, in 1870, as American Political Economy. In 1871, Bowen would be removed from teaching political economy and would be replaced with the less controversial and more Classical aligned economist Charles Franklin Dunbar. In his later years, Bowen would serve on the United States silver currency commission, where he would produce the minority report in 1876. Francis Bowen would later die in Boston on January 21, 1890.