Adlai
Ewing Stevenson,
the grandson of the former vice president, Adlai E. Stevenson (1893-97),
was born in Los
Angeles on
5th February, 1900. After studying at Princeton University, Stevenson
worked as a journalist and as a lawyer in Chicago.
In July 1941 William Knox persuaded Stevenson
to join the Navy Department. During the Second World
War Stevenson took part in several European missions for the State
Department and from 1945 served on the American delegations to the
foundation conferences of the United Nations Organization.
In 1948 Stevenson was elected governor of Illinois, where he developed
a reputation for honesty and efficiency. He introduced a series of
reforms including a merit system for the state police, improvements
in state mental hospitals and greater state aid for schools.
While governor of Illinois Stevenson became a target for Joe
McCarthy. Stevenson was attacked for appearing as a character
witness for Alger Hiss, the alleged communist
spy, in his perjury trial. Stevenson also upset a group of Conservative
senators, including Pat McCarran, John
Wood, Karl Mundt and Richard
Nixon, when they sponsored a measure to deal with members of the
Communist Party. Stevenson argued that
"The whole notion of loyalty inquisitions is a national characteristic
of the police state, not of democracy. The history of Soviet Russia
is a modern example of this ancient practice. I must, in good conscience,
protest against any unnecessary suppression of our rights as free
men. We must not burn down the house to kill the rats." Despite
the opposition of liberals such as Stevenson and Harry
S. Truman, the Internal Security Act
became law in 1950.
Stevenson was chosen as the Democratic
Party candidate for the 1952 presidential election. It was one
of the dirtiest in history with Richard Nixon,
the Republican vice-presidential candidate, leading the attack on
Stevenson. Speaking in Indiana, Nixon described Stevenson as a man
with a "PhD from Dean Acheson's cowardly college of Communist
containment." In an attempt to link Stevenson with the Soviet
spy ring he added: "Somebody had to testify for Alger Hiss, but
you don't have to elect him President of the United States."
Joseph McCarthy also attacked Stevenson
as being soft on communism and claimed that he would like to spend
sometime with him so that "I might be able to make a good American
out of him." Stevenson retaliated by pointing out the dangers
of "phony patriots", "ill-informed censors" and
"self-appointed thought police". At one meeting he told
his audience: "Most of us favour free enterprise for business.
Let us also favour free enterprise for the mind."
Stevenson also had the added problem of having
criticised J. Edgar Hoover and the efficiency
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in
1949. Since that date Hoover had been collecting information on Stevenson
and when he became the Democratic Party
candidate in 1952, the FBI compiled a nineteen-page memorandum on
material that could damage his campaign. The FBI agent, Donald
Surine, passed this onto Joseph McCarthy.
This included false information alleging Stevenson was a homosexual
and a Marxist.
Faced by this smear campaign and the popular wartime hero, Dwight
D. Eisenhower, Stevenson lost by 33,936,252 votes to 27,314,922.
In early 1954 Stevenson began attacking Eisenhower for not condemning
the activities of Joseph McCarthy. Although
McCarthy had now started investigating army commanders, he was unwilling
to directly attack the man who had helped him win victory in 1952.
Instead he delegated the task to his vice president, Richard
Nixon. On 4th March, 1954, Nixon made a speech where, although
not mentioning McCarthy, made it clear who he was talking about: "Men
who have in the past done effective work exposing Communists in this
country have, by reckless talk and questionable methods, made themselves
the issue rather than the cause they believe in so deeply."
With the worst aspects of McCarthyism
now over, Stevenson was selected as the Democratic
Party candidate in 1956. Dwight D.
Eisenhower was a popular president and with the economy in good
shape, Stevenson had little chance of defeating his Republican
Party opponent and lost by 35,585,316 to 26,031,322.
Over the next few years Stevenson concentrated on writing books on
politics. This included Call
to Greatness
(1954), What
I Think
(1956), Friends
and Enemies
(1958) and Looking
Outward
(1963).
When John F. Kennedy
was elected president in 1960, he appointed Stevenson as the U.S.
representative to the United Nations. Adlai
Ewing Stevenson served in this post until his death in London on 14th
July, 1965.
(1) Adlai Stevenson, brief
autobiography published in 1953.
My father's
family moved to Kentucky from Virginia and North
Carolina, and a generation or so later they moved on to Bloomington,
Illinois, before the Civil War. They were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians
and Democrats, and strong in the faith, both political and religious.
Miraculously, Grandfather Stevenson flourished politically in Republican
Illinois and was elected Vice-President with Grover Cleveland in 1892.
He was nominated again with Bryan in 1900, and, as a feeble old man,
was a reluctant but very strong candidate for Governor in 1908. My
father's Democratic allegiance and activity ended only with his death
in 1929.
But my mother's family
were Pennsylvania Quakers who came early to Illinois. Her grandfather,
Jesse Fell, was a "liberal" of those days, I suppose, an
abolitionist, educator and a founder of the Unitarian Church in Bloomington.
Discontented with the Whigs, he took the leading part in organizing
a "Republican Party" in Central Illinois and worked tirelessly
for the advancement of his long-time friend, Abraham Lincoln. His
son-in-law, my grandfather, William Osborn Davis, was also a Pennsylvania
Quaker who found the Unitarian Church in Bloomington much to his liking.
For forty years he was a leading Republican editor and publisher of
Illinois.
So it is hardly surprising
that when the son of the Democratic Vice-president married the daughter
of the Republican editor of the same town, the newspapers of the country
headlined the event as a "triumph of love over politics."
Small wonder, then, that
as I grew up in Bloomington, I found myself in Mother's beloved Unitarian
Church and Father's beloved Democratic Party.
(2) Adlai Stevenson was a strong
opponent of the Internal
Security Act (1950)
The
whole notion of loyalty inquisitions is a national characteristic
of the police state, not of democracy. The history of Soviet Russia
is a modern example of this ancient practice. I must, in good conscience,
protest against any unnecessary suppression of our rights as free
men. We must not burn down the house to kill the rats.
(3) Adlai Stevenson, speech,
New York City (27th August, 1952)
We talk a great deal about patriotism. What do we mean by patriotism
in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean
is a sense of national responsibility which will enable America to
remain master of her power - to walk with it in serenity and wisdom,
with self-respect and the respect of all mankind; a patriotism that
puts country ahead of self; a patriotism which is not short, frenzied
outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a
lifetime. The dedication of a lifetime - these are words that are
easy to utter, but this is a mighty assignment. For it is often easier
to fight for principles than to live up to them.
Patriotism,
I have said, means putting country before self. This is no abstract
phrase, and unhappily, we find some things in American life today
of which we cannot be proud.
True patriotism, it seems
to me, is based on tolerance and a large measure of humility.
There are men among us
who use "patriotism" as a club for attacking other Americans.
What can we say for the self-styled patriot who thinks that a Negro,
a Jew, a Catholic, or a Japanese-American is less an American than
he? That betrays the deepest article of our faith, the belief in individual
liberty and equality which has always been the heart and soul of the
American idea.
What can we say for the
man who proclaims himself a patriot - and then for political or personal
reasons attacks the patriotism of faithful public servants? I give
you, as a shocking example, the attacks which have been made on the
loyalty and the motives of our great wartime Chief of Staff, General
Marshall. To me this is the type of "patriotism" which is,
in Dr. Johnson's phrase, "the last refuge of scoundrels."
The anatomy of patriotism
is complex. But surely intolerance and public irresponsibility cannot
be cloaked in the shining armor of rectitude and righteousness. Nor
can the denial of the right to hold ideas that are different - the
freedom of man to think as he pleases. To strike freedom of the mind
with the fist of patriotism is an old and ugly subtlety.
And the freedom of the
mind, my friends, has served America well. The vigor of our political
life, our capacity for change, our cultural, scientific and industrial
achievements, all derive from free inquiry, from the free mind - from
the imagination, resourcefulness and daring of men who are not afraid
of new ideas. Most all of us favor free enterprise for business. Let
us also favor free enterprise for the mind. For, in the last analysis,
we would fight to the death to protect it. Why is it, then, that we
are sometimes slow
to detect, or are indifferent to, the dangers that beset it?
(4) Adlai Stevenson, speech,
Detroit
(1st September, 1952)
The relationship between the Democratic Party and the working people
of America is a very simple one. We both believe in equal rights for
all and in special privileges for none. We both believe that the objective
of our country and of its Government is to achieve human decency,
to meet human needs, and to fulfill human hopes.
We tale honest open pride
in what the tremendous progress of the last twenty years has meant,
not for the Democratic Party, but for the whole nation. We pulled
ourselves, as you know, out of the quicksand of depression. In fighting
an awful war we did our part and we did it gloriously.
We have made America the
best place to live and work in the world has ever known - a land where
men are assured a decent wage and security when their work is done;
a land where the mother can know that her children's opportunities
are bright and limitless.
But these things, my friends,
are not permanent. They have to be fought for, fought for by each
succeeding generation. So it's my obligation, I think, to give you
my ideas of our common interests, my thoughts about our common future.
I see three sets of common
interests in the labor field. These are positive interests, constructive
interests. We have talked, it seems to me, too much in terms of labor
wars, too little in terms of labor peace, too much in terms of stopping
things by law, too little in terms of establishing industrial democracy.
There is our first common
interest in securing to all who work the minimums of human decency.
This means, among other things, that the men and women in our working
force, some 62,000,000 of us, shall receive a decent living wage,
insurance against the risks of disability and unemployment, and the
assurance of solid, not token, security when life's work is done.
It means, too, that we
must struggle tirelessly to add to these assurances, equality of work
opportunity for every one of us - regardless of race, of color or
of creed. Human decency is the theme of our history and the spirit
of our religion. We must never cease trying to write its guarantees
not just into our laws, but into the hearts and the minds of men.
(5) Adlai Stevenson, speech,
Louiseville
(27th September, 1952)
Last Monday General Eisenhower spoke in Cincinnati about Korea. He
said that this was a "solemn
subject" and that he was going to state the truth as he knew
it, "the truth - plain and unvarnished."
If only his speech had
measured up to this introduction! And since he has tried, not once
but several times, to make a vote-getting issue out of our ordeal
in Korea, I shall speak on this subject and address myself to the
record.
We are fighting in Korea,
the General declares, because the American Government grossly underestimated
the Soviet threat; because the Government allowed America to become
weak; because American weakness compelled us to withdraw our forces
from Korea; because we abandoned China to the communists; and, finally,
because we announced to all the world that we had written off most
of the. Far East.
That's what he says -
now let's look at the record.
First, the General accuses
the Government of having underestimated the Soviet threat. But what
about the General himself? At the end of the war he was a professional
soldier of great influence and prestige, to whom the American people
listened with respect. What did he have to say about the Soviet threat?
In the years after the war, the General himself saw "no reason"
- as he later wrote - why the Russian system of government and Western
democracy "could not live side by side in the world." In
November, 1945, he even told the House Military Affairs Committee:
"Nothing guides Russian policy so much as a desire for friendship
with the United States."
I have no wish to blow
any trumpets here. But in March, 1946, I said: "We must forsake
any hope that the Soviet Union is going to lie still and lick her
awful wounds. She's not. Peace treaties that reflect her legitimate
demands, friendly governments on her frontiers and an effective United
Nations Organization should be sufficient security. But evidently
they are not and she intends to advance her aims, many of them objectives
of the Czars, to the utmost."
(6) Adlai Stevenson, speech,
Springfield
(24th October, 1952)
But I do not believe it is man's destiny to compress this once boundless
earth into a small neighborhood, the better to destroy it. Nor do
I believe it is in the nature of man to strike eternally at the image
of himself, and therefore of God. I profoundly believe that there
is on this horizon, as yet only dimly perceived, a new dawn of conscience.
In that purer light, people will come to see themselves in each other,
which is to say they will make themselves
known to one another by their similarities rather than by their
differences. Man's knowledge of things will begin to be matched
by man's knowledge of self. The significance of a smaller world
will be measured not in terms of military advantage, but in terms
of advantage for the human community. It will be the triumph
of the heartbeat over the drumbeat.
These are my beliefs and
I hold them deeply, but they would be
without any inner meaning for me unless I felt that they were also
the deep beliefs of human beings everywhere. And the proof of
this, to my mind, is the very existence of the United Nations. However
great the assaults on the peace may have been since the United
Nations was founded, the easiest way to demonstrate the idea
behind it is by the fact that no nation in the world today would
dare to remove itself from membership and separate his country
from the human hopes that are woven into the very texture
of the organization.
The early years of the
United Nations have been difficult ones, but
what did we expect? That peace would drift down from the skies
like soft snow? That there would be no ordeal, no anguish, no
testing, in this greatest of all human undertakings?
Any great institution
or idea must suffer its pains of birth and growth. We will not lose
faith in the United Nations. We see it as a living thing and we will
work and pray for its full growth and development. We want it to become
what it was intended to be - a world
society of nations under law, not merely law backed by force, but
law backed by justice and popular consent. We believe the answer
to world war can only be world law. This is our hope and our
commitment, and that is why I join all Americans on this anniversary
in saying: "More power to the United Nations."
(7)
Alistair Cooke, The
Guardian (3rd April, 1969)
Of
all the politicians I have known, Adlai Stevenson was the one I knew
best. The one who came closest to producing the embarrassment which
a political journalist ought to be most careful to avoid; never to
know a public man well enough that he inhibits you from writing about
him frankly and fully while he's living his public life. When Stevenson
died I wrote a piece about him which never saw the light of day because,
I take it, people who knew him not at all might have been outraged
by the discovery that he was a human being with frailties like you
and me. For a week or more it was necessary to pretend that he was
a saint.
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