Remembering Adlai Stevenson

Abstract

I first met Adlai Stevenson in 1946. Edward Weeks, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, suggested that I write a piece about the impending mid-term congressional election. It was the first postwar national election, the first since FDR’s death, the first since the dropping of the atomic bomb. It was also the first national test for the Truman administration—and people were already complaining and making condescending cracks, like “To err is Truman.” I thought it would be a good idea to take the political temperature in a few key states.

Dr. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., late renowned historian and author, was assistant to Governor Adlai Stevenson during his 1952 and 1956 Democratic presidential campaigns. In the 1960s he served as special assistant to President John F. Kennedy and, on behalf of the White House, was on numerous occasions in contact with Stevenson while the latter was U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

This chapter, with the permission of Dr. Schlesinger, was taken from remarks he delivered in a lecture on February 17, 2000, in Springfield, Illinois, sponsored by the Illinois Historical Library in celebration of Adlai E. Stevenson II’s centennial birthday.