Adlai E. Stevenson

American governor of Illinois (1949-1953)

• Born: February 5, 1900
• Birthplace: Los Angeles, California
• Died: July 14, 1965
• Place of death: London, England

Although unsuccessful in his repeated bids for the presidency, Stevenson inspired a new generation of liberals who would write the agenda for the New Frontier and Great Society during the 1960’s. He brought to the American political scene an all too uncommon blend of integrity, high intelligence, and humane values.

Early Life

Adlai E. Stevenson was born in Los Angeles, where his father, Lewis Stevenson, managed the Hearst mining and newspaper interests. Stevenson’s family, however, was based in Bloomington, Illinois, and the marriage of his parents had united the town’s leading Republican and Democratic families. The Stevensons and their relatives had long been active in Illinois political affairs. His great-grandfather, Jesse Fell, was a founder of the Republican Party and a political confidant of Abraham Lincoln. His grandfather, after whom he was named, was an Illinois Democrat who had served as Grover Cleveland’s vice president during the 1890’s.

This family history influenced Stevenson’s formative years. In 1906, his family returned to Bloomington, where his father owned and managed several farms, became a noted agricultural reformer, and was active in state and national politics. Consequently, Adlai became acquainted with such political giants as William Jennings Bryan and, most notably, Woodrow Wilson, whose moral vision and internationalism became guideposts for his subsequent political career. Although he enjoyed a happy childhood in Bloomington, he became an indifferent student in the town’s primary and secondary schools. This idyllic period was shattered in December, 1912, when he accidentally shot and killed his cousin. Stevenson was so shattered by the tragedy that he could never speak of it until it became part of the 1952 presidential campaign.

In 1916, Stevenson attended Choate School in Connecticut to prepare for the entrance examinations for Princeton University. He entered Princeton in 1918 and was graduated four years later with average grades. He was very active in student affairs and was managing editor of The Princetonian. At his father’s insistence, Stevenson enrolled at Harvard Law School, where he was miserable; his grades declined accordingly. In 1926, he completed his legal training at Northwestern Law School. During this period, he met with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., which proved to be one of the most satisfying experiences of his life.

By this time, Stevenson had decided to make law his life’s work. He had been seriously considering becoming a newspaper publisher, and he enjoyed working on the school press at Choate and Princeton as well as editing the family’s Bloomington newspaper. In 1926, Stevenson made one last effort in the newspaper business by getting a job as a reporter for the International News Service to enter the Soviet Union and obtain an interview with Foreign Minister Georgi Chicherin. Stevenson traveled by train from the Black Sea through Kharkov and Kiev to Moscow, and his observations of life under the Bolshevik regime colored his attitude toward the Soviet system for the remainder of his life.

In 1927, Stevenson became a member of a prestigious Chicago law firm, and in the following year, he married Ellen Borden, a Chicago heiress with literary interests. They had three sons, Adlai III, Borden, and John Fell and established a home in the small community of Libertyville, Illinois.

Life’s Work

In 1929, the United States suffered the greatest economic contraction in its history, with devastating social, economic, and political consequences. In 1932, voters turned to the Democratic Party under Franklin D. Roosevelt, who promised the country a “new deal.” Stevenson became one of the New Deal’s bright young attorneys who swarmed into Washington, D.C., to write, enact, and administer myriad administration programs. In 1933, he served as special counsel to the Agricultural Adjustment Administration under George Peek; then, a few months later, he joined the Alcohol Control Administration as special counsel to handle price codes and tax problems following the repeal of Prohibition. During the course of his brief service, Stevenson became acquainted with such figures as George Ball, Alger Hiss, James Rowe, and Tommy Corcoran, who played significant roles in American history.

Although Stevenson had left government service, he became increasingly active in politics. In 1930, he had joined the Council on Foreign Relations, where he honed his oratorical skills on behalf of Wilsonian internationalist principles. In 1939, he joined the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies to counter the isolationist mood of the country. His support of Roosevelt’s mobilization efforts, including the “destroyer deal” and the Lend-Lease program, reflected his belief that Great Britain was fighting the American fight against totalitarian aggression.

After the United States entered World War II in December, 1941, Stevenson became assistant secretary of the Navy under his close friend Frank Knox, a Republican newspaper publisher from Chicago. Stevenson handled the press, wrote Knox’s speeches, and promoted desegregation of the Navy. In 1943, he led a mission to Italy to plan the Allied occupation of that country. As the war concluded, he was made a member of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey and then became assistant secretary of state under Edward L. Stettinius and James F. Byrnes, Jr. Finally, he became press officer of the United States delegation to the United Nations conference at San Francisco in 1945.

These posts served as a proving ground for Stevenson’s meteoric rise in Illinois and national politics during the late 1940’s and the 1950’s. In Illinois, the incumbent Republican governor had been compromised by corruption in his administration, and Democratic boss Colonel Jacob M. Arvey of Cook County needed strong reform candidates to capture the state house and the Senate seat. Arvey selected Stevenson for governor and Paul H. Douglas for the Senate. In 1948, Stevenson campaigned as a political amateur and pledged honest government. He won by more than 500,000 votes, helping to bring in not only Douglas but also President Harry S. Truman in one of the country’s greatest political upsets. This victory made Stevenson one of the “class of’48,” a group of moderates and liberals who would dominate national politics into the 1970’s.

Although his political career led to the breakup of his marriage, Stevenson was an effective liberal governor during a period of anticommunist hysteria known as McCarthyism. Stevenson appointed businessmen, Republican and Democratic, to state positions, terminated commercial gambling, placed the Illinois state police on civil service, built new highways, streamlined state government, and increased education appropriations. On the debit side, however, was his failure to persuade the state legislature to enact a permanent fair employment practices commission and to authorize a state convention to revise an archaic state constitution.

As a result of his gubernatorial performance, Stevenson became a favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952. The Democrats had been in power since 1933, and the party’s domestic record and Cold War policies made it vulnerable to a conservative attack. The Truman administration, in fact, had become so unpopular that the president declined to seek reelection. Instead, Truman placed strong private and public pressure on Stevenson to make the race. The problem was that Stevenson did not want the position; he wanted to be reelected governor of Illinois. Moreover, he believed himself to be too inexperienced for the office. Stevenson’s hesitation led to the charge that he was indecisive, which was to haunt him for the rest of his career. In the end, he was nominated for president in a movement that came as close to a draft as any in the twentieth century.

The 1952 campaign between Stevenson and General Dwight D. Eisenhower, an enormously popular war hero, became a classic confrontation. Behind in the polls from the beginning, Stevenson pledged to “talk sense” to the American people and offered no panacea for the nation’s troubles. His position on the issues revealed him to be a moderate liberal on domestic matters and a cold warrior in foreign affairs. His penchant for writing his own speeches, his wit and erudition, his use of Lincolnian and Holmesian anecdotes, and his humility charmed millions of voters. When his opponents condemned him for appealing to intellectuals, he responded, “Eggheads of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks!”

Although the early stages of the campaign showed promise, a number of factors combined to bring the Stevenson effort to a bitter conclusion. Stevenson’s humor, intellectualism, and Hamlet-like posturing before the nominating convention made many voters suspect that he did not lust for the office. Moreover, the Republican attack of “K1C2” (Korea, communism, corruption) proved to be very effective with the voters. Stevenson’s entanglement with the Hiss controversy did nothing to refute the charge that he was “soft on communism.” Additionally, his support for federal over states’ rights on the tidelands issue cost him significant support in such states as Louisiana, Texas, and California. The coup de grace to the campaign, however, proved to be Eisenhower’s pledge to “go to Korea” and bring that stalemated conflict to an end. On election day, Stevenson lost by more than 6.6 million votes, including the electoral votes of four southern states.

Stevenson declined to disappear from public view during the 1950’s. He became a world traveler, met world leaders, and solidified his credentials in foreign affairs. He also maintained a rigorous speaking schedule at home, campaigned for Democrats in the congressional elections of 1954 and 1958, and published several books on contemporary issues. In 1956, he was renominated for president by his party and campaigned on the theme of a “New America.” Although he proved to be more liberal on civil rights than was Eisenhower, he badly mishandled the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, which struck down segregation. Seeking to prevent national divisiveness on this issue, he declared that he would not use federal troops to desegregate public schools. He later recovered somewhat by pledging to enforce the decision if it was defied by state authorities. More controversial, however, were his proposals to end the draft and nuclear testing. Whatever chance he had for success was undermined in late October and November, 1956, by the Suez Canal and Hungarian crises. The electorate declined to change leaders, and Stevenson lost by an even greater margin 35,590,472 votes to 26,029,752.

By now, Stevenson’s career had crested. In 1960, die-hard Stevenson loyalists made a “last hurrah” for their hero at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, but the party turned to John F. Kennedy and a younger generation for leadership. Following Kennedy’s narrow election victory, Stevenson hoped to be appointed secretary of state, only to be bitterly disappointed by his nomination for ambassador to the United Nations. Kennedy softened the disappointment by making the position cabinet-level and promising Stevenson a role in the National Security Council.

Stevenson’s expertise in world affairs and his relationships with world leaders made him a popular and effective representative for the United States. His confrontations with his Soviet counterpart, Valerian Zorin, were tough and dramatic. In April, 1961, Stevenson’s prestige tumbled when he denied that the United States had aided the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba by Cuban exiles. When President Kennedy took full responsibility for the incident, Stevenson was badly embarrassed and contemplated resignation. This action was averted when Kennedy promised to keep him fully informed of foreign policy decisions and even to seek his counsel.

This led to Ambassador Stevenson’s superb performance in October, 1962, over the Cuban Missile Crisis when he successfully challenged Zorin’s denial of Soviet insertion of missiles inside Cuba. His calm presentation of the evidence and his vow to wait until “hell freezes over” for the Soviet response won for him great praise at home and abroad. Unfortunately, this bravura performance was tarnished by administration insiders who leaked to journalists that Stevenson had acted the role of appeaser toward the Soviets. Although Stevenson and the Kennedy administration denied the story, it once again reinforced the public’s perception of Stevenson’s passivity.

Stevenson clearly was unhappy serving under Kennedy and Lydon B. Johnson. His admirers encouraged him to resign with a denunciation of their foreign policies, but he could not bring himself to take that step. While he did criticize Johnson’s intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965, he continued to support the containment, limited war, and collaborative aspects of American diplomacy developed during the Truman administration. He even supported basic American policies in South Vietnam. On the afternoon of July 14, 1965, Stevenson collapsed and died of a heart attack on a street in London.

Significance

Stevenson had acquired the reputation of a political loser, but his career should elicit admiration rather than contempt. He brought to public life the highest ideals and standards and never wavered in their defense. He did not seek easy answers to complex issues. He was an enigmatic political leader, a man who sought the nation’s highest office yet appeared indifferent when it was within his grasp. It has been said that Stevenson lacked the ruthlessness to become president, but it may also be that he wanted the office on his terms. It seems ironic that he received his highest accolades not from his fellow citizens but from the people of the world who saw him as the best that America could produce.

A politician’s success can be measured in many ways. Stevenson’s “New America” campaign of 1956 anticipated much of the social and economic legislation of the New Frontier and Great Society in the 1960’s. He inspired and brought into the political system millions of voters who had never before participated. He stood up to McCarthyism and practiced a disciplined civility in politics to which all politicians should aspire.

Stevenson belongs to the tradition of pragmatic reform characteristic of the twentieth century. His admirers saw him as a political leader with a moral vision for economic and social justice at home and abroad. In foreign affairs, he represented the tradition of Wilsonian internationalism, with its respect for international law, collective security, nuclear arms limitation, and human rights. He was, at heart, an optimist, a gentle and wise man who believed in strong and compassionate government and the nurturing of democratic principles throughout the world.

Bibliography

Brown, Stuart Gerry. Adlai E. Stevenson, a Short Biography: The Conscience of the Country. Woodbury, N.Y.: Barron’s Woodbury Press, 1965. A popular biography by a Stevenson admirer. Based on secondary sources as well as interviews with the subject and his friends and colleagues.

Cochran, Bert. Adlai Stevenson: Patrician Among the Politicians. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1969. Interprets Stevenson’s life and career within the context of upper-class reform dating to the Gilded Age. Includes commentary on the role of intellectuals in the Cold War era.

Johnson, Wallace, and Carol Evans, eds. The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson, 1900-1965. 8 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972-1979. Correspondence and papers dealing with the life and career of Stevenson. Reflects his wit, intelligence, and character. A significant source of primary materials for students of post-World War II politics.

Liebling, Alvin, ed. Adlai Stevenson’s Lasting Legacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Collection of essays by Eugene McCarthy, Adlai Stevenson III, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and others examining Stevenson’s past and current social significance.

Martin, John Bartlow. Adlai Stevenson and the World: The Life of Adlai Stevenson. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977. A scholarly two-volume biography of Stevenson by a longtime friend and associate. Volume 1 covers the formative years through the 1952 presidential campaign. Volume 2 discusses Stevenson’s political decline and his influence in world affairs. A sympathetic portrait.

Ross, Lillian. “A Man for All Seasons.” Vogue, November, 2003, 136-140. A profile of Stevenson surveying his career before he ran for the presidency in 1952, the 1952 election, and Ross’s admiration for his writing.

Severn, Bill. Adlai Stevenson: Citizen of the World. New York: David McKay, 1966. A popular biography useful for readers with little background in modern American political history. An admiring treatment.

Stevenson, Adlai E. Call to Greatness. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954. A candid nonpartisan assessment of the United States’ position in world affairs during the 1950’s. Emphasizes the destabilizing impact of nationalist and independence movements in the developing world. Urges Americans to be more mature in their hopes and aspirations for a stable and peaceful world order.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Friends and Enemies: What I Learned in Russia. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959. Commentary on Stevenson’s observations while in the Soviet Union in 1958. Notes that the Soviet regime is here to stay but states that the Soviet Union and the United States can maintain a peaceful coexistence. Typical of Stevenson’s elegance of expression and clarity of style.

Whitman, Alden, and The New York Times. Portrait Adlai E. Stevenson: Politician, Diplomat, Friend. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. Drawn largely from the files of The New York Times. A flattering account of Stevenson’s career, especially from his Illinois gubernatorial campaign until his death. Views Stevenson as a great, but flawed, man and emphasizes his growing estrangement from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.