Henry Francis Bowers

Henry Francis Bowers (1837–1911) was the founder of the American Protective Association in Clinton, Iowa. It was staunchly politically anti-Catholic.

Henry Bowers, an attorney, objected to Catholic involvement in politics. He paradoxically held friendships with Catholics within his community.

His demands for Catholics to remove themselves from politics, was because he saw Catholics as having dual loyalties. To Bowers they could not be both loyal to the United States and a pope in Rome.

Further reading

• Bennett, David H. The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (1988).
• Humphrey J. Desmond, "The American Protective Association," Catholic Encyclopedia (1911).
• Hingham, John. "The Mind of a Nativist: Henry F. Bowers and the A.P.A.," American Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 1 (Spring 1952), pp. 16-24. In JSTOR
• Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1955.
• Kinzer, Donald L., An Episode in Anti-Catholicism: The American Protective Association. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964.
• Lipset, Seymour Martin and Earl Raab. The Politics of Unreason: Right Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970. (1970).

External links

• "Protestant Paranoia: The American Protective Association Oath," www.historymatters.gmu.edu
• "1896: McKinley and the A.P.A.," www.projects.vassar.edu