U.S. Vice Presidents: Adlai Stevenson

Vice President Stevenson...

• ...got his first taste of politics at age 12 when he met New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson.
• ...studied history and literature at Princeton where he served as managing editor of the Daily Princetonian newspaper.
• ...President john F. Kennedy appointed Stevenson as the Ambassador to the United Nations.

Adlai Stevenson, in full Adlai Ewing Stevenson was the 23rd vice president of the United States (1893–97) in the Democratic administration of President Grover Cleveland. Stevenson was the son of John Turner Stevenson, a tobacco farmer, and Eliza Ann Ewing. After studying law, he began his practice in Metamora, Ill. Stimulated by the famous Lincoln–Douglas Debates, which took place during the Illinois senatorial campaign of 1858, he became active in local and national politics and was appointed to his first public office as a master in chancery of Woodford County’s circuit court in 1860, a position he held throughout the American Civil War. As first assistant postmaster general under President Cleveland (1885–89), Stevenson received the enmity of the Republican Party for his removal of thousands of Republican postmasters throughout the country. After unsuccessfully seeking the vice-presidential nomination in 1888, Stevenson was named associate justice of the Supreme Court for the District of Columbia, though the Republican-controlled Senate blocked his nomination.