Robert Lowry (governor)


 * This article is about the American politician. For the American composer, poet, and preacher, see Robert Wadsworth Lowry.

Robert Lowry (March 10, 1830 – January 19, 1910) was an American politician, 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. At the Battle of Shiloh Major Lowry commanded the Sixth Mississippi regiment which suffered very heavy casualties and he was wounded himself. 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. 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. 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. Governor Lowry called out the state militia to keep the peace in Leflore County at the end of his term of office. 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. Rapid industrial development occurred during his administration as well as the founding of the first state-supported women's college at Columbus.