Adlai Ewing Stevenson I (October 23, 1835 – June 14, 1914) was an American politician and diplomat who served as the 23rd vice president of the United States from 1893 to 1897 under President Grover Cleveland. A member of the Democratic Party, Stevenson served as a U.S. Representative for Illinois in the late 1870s and early 1880s. He was the founder of the Stevenson political family.
Appointed assistant postmaster general of the United States in 1885, during Cleveland's first administration, Stevenson fired many Republican postal workers and replaced them with Southern Democrats. This earned him the enmity of the Republican-controlled Congress, but made him a favorite as Cleveland's running mate in 1892, and he was elected vice president of the United States. During his term of office, Stevenson supported the free-silver lobby against the gold-standard men like Cleveland, but was praised for governing in a dignified, non-partisan manner. He became the first vice president to serve under a president who won a non-consecutive second term for a second presidency.
In 1900, he ran for vice president with William Jennings Bryan. He was the paternal grandfather of Adlai Stevenson II, a governor of Illinois and the unsuccessful Democratic presidential nominee in both 1952 and 1956.
Adlai Ewing Stevenson was born in Christian County, Kentucky, on October 23, 1835, to John Turner and Eliza Ann Ewing Stevenson, Wesleyans of Scots-Irish descent. The Stevenson family is first recorded (as the Stephensons) in Roxburghshire, Scotland, in the early 18th century. The family appears to have had some wealth, as a private chapel in the Archdiocese of St Andrews bears their name. At some point, probably shortly after the Jacobite rising of 1715, the family migrated to County Antrim, Ireland, near Belfast. At least one Stephenson was a police officer. Adlai's great-grandfather William Stephenson was a tailor who specialized in millinery. After William's father died in the 1730s, his family moved to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. William joined when his apprenticeship was completed in 1748.
In 1762, the family moved to what became Iredell County, North Carolina. Including lands given to his children, William Stephenson (Stevenson after the American Revolution) had amassed 3,400 acres (1,400 ha) of land by the time of his death. One branch of the family, including Adlai Stevenson's father, then moved to Kentucky in 1813.
Stevenson was born on the family farm in Christian County. He attended Blue Water School in what became Herndon, Kentucky. His childhood playmates included James A. McKenzie, a future representative for Kentucky, and Amanda Barkley, the grandmother of future Vice President Alben W. Barkley. In 1850, when he was 14, frost killed the family's tobacco crop. Two years later, his father set free their few slaves and the family moved to Bloomington, Illinois, where his father operated a sawmill. Stevenson attended Illinois Wesleyan University at Bloomington and graduated from Centre College, in Danville, Kentucky, where he joined Phi Delta Theta. His father's death prompted Stevenson to return from Kentucky to Illinois to run the sawmill.
Stevenson studied law with Bloomington attorney Robert E. Williams. He was admitted to the bar in 1858, and commenced practice in Metamora. As a young lawyer, Stevenson encountered such celebrated Illinois attorneys as Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, and he campaigned for Douglas in his 1858 Senate race against Lincoln. Stevenson's dislike of Lincoln might have been prompted by a contentious meeting, at which Lincoln made several witty quips disparaging Stevenson. Stevenson made speeches against the "Know-Nothing" movement, a nativist group opposed to immigrants and Catholics. That stand helped cement his support in Illinois' large German and Irish communities. In a predominantly Republican area, the Democratic Stevenson won friends through his storytelling and his warm and engaging personality.
Marriage and political life, 1859–1884
Stevenson was state's attorney of Woodford County beginning in 1859. During the American Civil War, he was appointed a master in chancery (an aide in a court of equity). In 1864 Stevenson was a presidential elector for the Democratic ticket.
In 1866, he married Letitia Green. They had three daughters, Mary, Julia and Letitia, and a son, Lewis Stevenson. Letitia helped establish the Daughters of the American Revolution as a way of healing the divisions between the North and South after the Civil War, and succeeded the wife of Benjamin Harrison as the DAR's second president-general.
In 1869, at the end of his term as state's attorney, he entered law practice with his cousin, James Stevenson Ewing, moving with his wife back to Bloomington, Illinois, and settling in a large house on Franklin Square. Stevenson & Ewing would become one of the state's most prominent law firms. Ewing would later become the U.S. ambassador to Belgium.
The Democratic Party nominated Stevenson for the United States Congress in 1874. Stevenson was well-liked by Republicans and levied influence in the local Masonic lodge. Stevenson also received the nomination of the Independent Reform Party, a state party that fought monopolies following the Panic of 1873. Stevenson campaigned against Republican incumbent John McNulta. He attacked McNulta's support for high tariffs and what became known as the Salary Grab Act, where congressmen increased their salaries by 50%. He spoke little of his own positions other than railroad regulation. McNulta attacked back, accusing Stevenson of membership in the Knights of the Golden Circle. Thanks to the votes siphoned away from the Republican Base by the Independent Reform Party, Stevenson won the election with 52% of the vote, though he did not carry his hometown of Bloomington. He was elevated to the 44th United States Congress, the first under Democratic control since the Civil War.
In 1876, Stevenson was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection. The Republican presidential ticket, headed by Rutherford B. Hayes, carried his district, and Stevenson was narrowly defeated, getting 49.6 percent of the vote. In 1878, he ran on both the Democratic and Greenback tickets and won, returning to a House from which one-third of his earlier colleagues had either voluntarily retired or been removed by the voters. In 1880, again a presidential election year, he once more lost narrowly, and he lost again in 1882 in his final race for Congress. He considered a run in 1884, but a redistricting made his district safely Republican.
In between legislative sessions, Stevenson increased his prominence in Bloomington. He rose to become grandmaster of his Masonic chapter and founded the Bloomington Daily Bulletin in 1881, a Democratic newspaper that sought to challenge the Republican Pantagraph. Stevenson directed the People's Bank and co-managed the McLean County Coal Company with his brothers. The company founded Stevensonville, a company town near the mine shafts. Employees were purportedly fired if they did not support Stevenson in an election year.
Election of Grover Cleveland in 1884 and the U.S. Post Office
The Stevensons vacationed at lake resorts in Wisconsin during summers. There, Stevenson befriended William Freeman Vilas, a growing voice among Midwest Democrats and a friend of Grover Cleveland. Stevenson was a delegate to the 1884 Democratic National Convention, and after briefly supporting a local candidate, he threw his support behind Cleveland. Vilas and Stevenson personally informed Cleveland of the nomination. When Cleveland was elected that November, Vilas was named postmaster general. Although a different supporter was initially named assistant postmaster general, Stevenson received the position after the first choice fell ill.
The new position put Stevenson in charge of the largest patronage system in the country. Like his predecessors, Stevenson removed tens of thousands of political opponents from postal positions and replaced them with Democrats. Just before Cleveland left office, he nominated Stevenson for the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia judgeship left vacant by the death of William Matthews Merrick. Republicans controlled the U.S. Senate and refused to act, exacting a measure of revenge on Stevenson for replacing Republican postmasters while also secure in the knowledge that they would be able to confirm a Republican nominee after Benjamin Harrison was inaugurated. A disappointed Stevenson returned to Bloomington at the conclusion of Cleveland's term.