Stevenson, Adlai E. (1900–1965)

ADLAI E. STEVENSON WAS a public-minded Democrat and gifted orator who was twice nominated for president. Adlai Ewing Stevenson II was born February 5, 1900, in Los Angeles, California, son of Lewis G. Stevenson and Helen (Davis) Stevenson. He was named for his grandfather, Adlai E. Stevenson, vice president of the United States under Grover Cleveland in his second term.

An early event in Stevenson's life is believed to have shaped his humanitarianism. He accidentally killed a girl, Ruth Merwin, while playing with a gun at a Christmas party when they were both 12. Stevenson attended Choate School and graduated with a bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1922 and a law degree from Northwestern University in 1926. He then practiced law in Chicago, Illinois. Stevenson married Ellen Borden in 1928 in Chicago. They had three sons, Adlai III (who served in the U.S. Senate from Illinois from 1970 to 1981), Borden, and John. The couple divorced in 1949. It is believed that Stevenson's divorce undercut his chances of being elected president at that time. Not until 1980 did the country elect a divorced president, Ronald Reagan (albeit one who had long since remarried).

In 1933, Stevenson was called to Washington, D.C., to join the Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. He served as counsel to the Agricultural Adjustment Agency, and was chief attorney at the Federal Alcohol Control Administration, a body created to deal with the repeal of Prohibition. He was later an assistant to the secretary of the navy. Stevenson was part of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations when that body was founded after World War II. In 1948, Stevenson was elected governor of Illinois in the biggest landslide in the state's history.

Stevenson was nominated by the Democratic Party for president in 1952 on the third ballot, after trailing Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee on the first ballot. No major-party presidential nomination since has taken more than a single ballot. Although Dwight Eisenhower did not win the popular vote by a landslide, he won in most of the states; Stevenson won only the electoral votes of nine southern states. Stevenson claimed it was “better to lose the election than mislead the people.” Stevenson sought a rematch in 1956. This time he was nominated on the first ballot, but he did not choose a vice-presidential running mate, preferring to let the convention choose one.

The convention chose Kefauver, although John F. Kennedy led the second ballot until Albert Gore (Sr.) and Hubert H. Humphrey withdrew in favor of Kefauver. Stevenson called for a “New America” and advocated programs that would in the next decade be implemented by Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as presidents. “There is a New America every morning when we wake up. It is upon us whether we will it or not,” Stevenson told the convention. This time, Eisenhower won a popular landslide, and Stevenson carried only six southern states and Missouri.