Adlai Stevenson I
23rd Vice President of the United States
In office March 4, 1893 – March 4, 1897
President	Grover Cleveland
Preceded by	Levi P. Morton
Succeeded by	Garret Hobart
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's 13th district
In office March 4, 1875 – March 4, 1877
Preceded by	John McNulta
Succeeded by	Thomas F. Tipton
In office March 4, 1879 – March 4, 1881
Preceded by	Thomas F. Tipton
Succeeded by	Dietrich C. Smith
Personal details
Born	October 23, 1835(1835-10-23) Christian County, Kentucky
Died	June 14, 1914(1914-06-14) (aged 78) Chicago, Illinois
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Letitia Green Stevenson
Alma mater	Illinois Wesleyan University Centre College
Signature

Adlai Ewing Stevenson I (October 23, 1835 – June 14, 1914) was a Congressman from Illinois. He was appointed Assistant Postmaster General of the United States during Grover Cleveland's first administration (1885–1889), when he 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 Grover Cleveland's running mate in 1892, and he duly became 23rd Vice President of the United States.

In office, he supported the free-silver lobby against the gold-standard men like Cleveland, but was praised for ruling in a dignified, non-partisan manner.

In 1900, he ran for Vice President with William Jennings Bryan.^[1] Although unsuccessful, he was the first ex-Vice President ever to win re-nomination for that post with a different Presidential candidate.

Early life[link]

Stevenson's parents, John Turner Stevenson and Eliza Ewing Stevenson, were Wesleyans of Scots-Irish descent. John Turner Stevenson's grandfather, William was born in Roxburgh, Scotland then migrated to and from Ulster around 1748, settling first in Pennsylvania and then in North Carolina in the County of Iredell. The family moved to Kentucky in 1813. Stevenson was born on the family farm in Christian County, Kentucky. He attended the common school in Blue Water, Kentucky. In 1852, when he was 16, frost killed the family's tobacco crop. His father set free their few slaves and the family moved to Bloomington, Illinois, where his father then operated a sawmill. Stevenson attended Illinois Wesleyan University at Bloomington and ultimately graduated from Centre College, in Danville, Kentucky; at the latter he was a part of Phi Delta Theta. His father's death prompted Adlai to return from Kentucky to Illinois to run the sawmill.

Stevenson was admitted to the bar in 1858, at age 23, and commenced practice in Metamora, in Woodford County, Illinois. As a young lawyer, Stevenson encountered such celebrated Illinois attorneys as Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, campaigning for Douglas in his 1858 Senate race against Lincoln. Stevenson's dislike of Lincoln might have been prompted by a contentious meeting between the two, where Lincoln made several witty quips disparaging Stevenson.^[2] Stevenson also 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, 1860-1884[link]

Congressman Stevenson

Stevenson was appointed master in chancery (an aide in a court of equity), his first public office, which he held during the Civil War. In 1864 Stevenson was a presidential elector for the Democratic ticket; he was also elected district attorney.

In 1866 he married Letitia Green, with whom he had fallen in love nine years earlier, at Centre College (her father, the Reverend Lewis Warner Green, the head of the college, had not agreed to the marriage, but he had died, and Letitia and her mother - who also opposed the marriage - had subsequently moved to Bloomington). They had three daughters and a son, Lewis G. 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 1868, at the end of his term as district attorney, he entered law practice with his cousin, James S. Ewing, moving with his wife back to Bloomington, settling in a large house on Franklin Square. Stevenson & Ewing would become one of the state's most prominent law firms. Ewing would later became the U.S. ambassador to Belgium.

In 1874, Stevenson was elected as a Democrat to the Forty-fourth Congress, serving from March 4, 1875 to March 4, 1877. Local Republican newspapers painted him as a "vile secessionist," but the continuing hardships from the Panic of 1873 caused voters to sweep him into office with the first Democratic congressional majority 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.

Election of Grover Cleveland in 1884 and the U.S. Post Office[link]

Stevenson served as first assistant postmaster general under Grover Cleveland in 1885. During that time he fired over 40,000 Republican workers and replaced them with Democrats from the South. The Republican-controlled U.S. Congress did not forget this: when Stevenson was nominated for a federal judgeship, he was defeated for confirmation by the same people who never forgot his 1885 purge.

Vice President, 1893-1897[link]

In 1892, when the Democrats chose Cleveland once again as their standard bearer, they appeased party regulars by the nomination of Stevenson, "headsman of the post-office," for vice president. As a supporter of using greenbacks and free silver to inflate the currency and alleviate economic distress in the rural districts, Stevenson balanced the ticket headed by Cleveland, the hard-money, gold-standard supporter. The winning Cleveland-Stevenson ticket carried Illinois, although not Stevenson's home district.

Civil service reformers held out hope for the second Cleveland administration but saw Vice President Stevenson as a symbol of the spoils system. He never hesitated to feed names of Democrats to the Post Office Department. Once he called at the US Treasury Department to protest against an appointment and was shown a letter he had written endorsing the candidate. Stevenson told the treasury officials not to pay attention to any of his written endorsements; if he really favored someone he would tell them personally.

A habitual cigar-smoker, Cleveland developed cancer of the mouth that required immediate surgery in the summer of 1893. The president insisted that the surgery be kept secret to avoid another panic on Wall Street. While on a yacht in New York harbor that summer, Cleveland had his entire upper jaw removed and replaced with an artificial device, an operation that left no outward scar. The cancer surgery remained secret for another quarter century. Cleveland's aides explained that he had merely had dental work. His vice president little realized how close he came to the presidency that summer.

Adlai Stevenson enjoyed his role as vice president, presiding over the U.S. Senate, "the most august legislative assembly known to men." He won praise for ruling in a dignified, nonpartisan manner. In personal appearance he stood six feet tall and was "of fine personal bearing and uniformly courteous to all." Although he was often a guest at the White House, Stevenson admitted that he was less an adviser to the president than "the neighbor to his counsels." He credited the President with being "courteous at all times" but noted that "no guards were necessary to the preservation of his dignity. No one would have thought of undue familiarity." For his part, President Cleveland snorted that the Vice President had surrounded himself with a coterie of free-silver men dubbed the "Stevenson cabinet." The president even mused that the economy had gotten so bad and the Democratic party so divided that "the logical thing for me to do ... was to resign and hand the Executive branch to Mr. Stevenson," joking that he would try to get his friends jobs in Stevenson's new cabinet.

Presidential campaigns of 1896 and 1900[link]

Stevenson was mentioned as a candidate to succeed Cleveland in 1896. Although he chaired the Illinois delegation to the Democratic National Convention, he gained little support. Stevenson, 60 years old, received a smattering of votes, but the convention was taken by storm by a thirty-six-year-old former representative from Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan, who delivered his fiery "Cross of Gold" speech in favor of a free-silver plank in the platform. Not only did the Democrats repudiate Cleveland by embracing free silver, but they also nominated Bryan for president. Many Cleveland Democrats, including most Democratic newspapers, refused to support Bryan, but Vice President Stevenson loyally endorsed the ticket.

After the 1896 election, Bryan remained the titular leader of the Democrats and frontrunner for the nomination in 1900. Much of the newspaper speculation about who would run as the party's vice-presidential candidate centered on Indiana Senator Benjamin Shively. When reporter Arthur Wallace Dunn interviewed Shively at the convention, the senator said he "did not want the glory of a defeat as a vice presidential candidate." Disappointed, Dunn said that he still had to file a story on the vice-presidential nomination, and then added: "I believe I'll write a piece about old Uncle Adlai." Shively responded

That's a good idea. Stevenson is just the man. There you have it. Uniting the old Cleveland element with the new Bryan Democracy. You've got enough for one story. But say, this is more than a joke. Stevenson is just the man.

For the rest of the day, Dunn heard other favorable remarks about Stevenson, and by that night the former vice president was the leading contender, since no one else was "very anxious to be the tail of what they considered was a forlorn hope ticket."^{[citation needed]}

The Populists had already nominated the ticket of Bryan and Charles A. Towne, a pro-silver Republican from Minnesota, with the tacit understanding that Towne would step aside if the Democrats nominated someone else. Bryan preferred his good friend Towne, but Democrats wanted one of their own, and the regular element of the party felt comfortable with Stevenson. Towne withdrew and campaigned for Bryan and Stevenson. As a result, Stevenson, who had run with Cleveland in 1892, now ran in 1900 with Cleveland's opponent Bryan. Twenty-five years senior to Bryan, Stevenson added age and experience to the ticket. Nevertheless, their effort failed badly against the Republican ticket of McKinley and Roosevelt. (Stevenson's role in the race is perhaps more distinguished by his being the first Vice President to win nomination for that office with a different running mate, after having completed his first term. As of 2008, Republican Charles W. Fairbanks's failure to win a second VP term in 1916 is the only example since.)

Final years[link]

After the 1900 election, Stevenson returned again to private practice in Illinois. He made one last attempt at office in a race for governor of Illinois in 1908, at age 72, narrowly losing. In 1909 he was brought in by founder Jesse Grant Chapline to aid distance learning school La Salle Extension University.^[3] After that, he retired to Bloomington, where his Republican neighbors described him as "windy but amusing." He died in Chicago on June 14, 1914. His body is interred in a family plot in Evergreen Cemetery, Bloomington, Illinois.

Stevenson's son, Lewis G. Stevenson, was Illinois secretary of state (1914–1917). Stevenson's grandson Adlai Ewing Stevenson II was the Democratic candidate for President of the United States in 1952 and 1956 and Governor of Illinois. His great-grandson, Adlai Ewing Stevenson III, was a U.S. senator from Illinois from 1970 to 1981 and an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Illinois in 1982 and 1986.

Legacy[link]

In 1962, Stevenson's alma mater, Centre College (who also gave Stevenson an honorary degree in 1893), built and named a residence hall after Stevenson - Stevenson House - as part of a new campus quadrangle. Stevenson House was renovated in 1995. [1]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Quotes by Adlai Stevenson
• Official U.S. Senate biography
• Stevensons put stamp on history, www.pantagraph.com
• Adlai Ewing Stevenson
• Works by or about Adlai Stevenson I in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Media related to Adlai Stevenson I at Wikimedia Commons

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Stevenson, Adlai Ewing". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

v t e Vice Presidents of the United States John Adams Thomas Jefferson Aaron Burr George Clinton Elbridge Gerry Daniel D. Tompkins John C. Calhoun Martin Van Buren Richard Mentor Johnson John Tyler George M. Dallas Millard Fillmore William R. King John C. Breckinridge Hannibal Hamlin Andrew Johnson Schuyler Colfax Henry Wilson William A. Wheeler Chester A. Arthur Thomas A. Hendricks Levi P. Morton Adlai Stevenson I Garret Hobart Theodore Roosevelt Charles W. Fairbanks James S. Sherman Thomas R. Marshall Calvin Coolidge Charles G. Dawes Charles Curtis John Nance Garner Henry A. Wallace Harry S. Truman Alben W. Barkley Richard Nixon Lyndon B. Johnson Hubert Humphrey Spiro Agnew Gerald Ford Nelson Rockefeller Walter Mondale George H. W. Bush Dan Quayle Al Gore Dick Cheney Joe Biden

v t e Cabinet of President Grover Cleveland (1893–1897) Vice President Adlai E. Stevenson I (1893–1897) Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham (1893–1895) Richard Olney (1895–1897) Secretary of the Treasury John G. Carlisle (1893–1897) Secretary of War Daniel S. Lamont (1893–1897) Attorney General Richard Olney (1893–1895) Judson Harmon (1895–1897) Postmaster General Wilson S. Bissell (1893–1895) William L. Wilson (1895–1897) Secretary of the Navy Hilary A. Herbert (1893–1897) Secretary of the Interior M. Hoke Smith (1893–1896) David R. Francis (1896–1897) Secretary of Agriculture Julius S. Morton (1893–1897)

Adlai Stevenson may refer to:

• Adlai Stevenson I (1835–1914), U.S. Vice President (1893–1897) and Congressman (1879–1881)
• Adlai Stevenson II (1900–1965), Governor of Illinois (1949–1953), U.S. presidential candidate (1952 and 1956), U.N. Ambassador (1961–1965), grandson of Adlai Stevenson I
• Adlai Stevenson III (born 1930), U.S. Senator (1970–1981), Illinois State Representative (1965–1967), candidate for Illinois governor (1982 and 1986), son of Adlai Stevenson II
• Adlai Stevenson IV (born 1956), journalist, son of Adlai Stevenson III

See also[link]

• Stevenson family

This disambiguation page lists articles about people with the same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan at the Independent Music Awards, Webster Hall, New York City.
Background information
Born	(1975-07-01) July 1, 1975 (age 36)
Origin	Detroit, Michigan, United States
Genres	Indie folk, baroque pop, indie pop, electronica
Occupations	Musician, singer-songwriter
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, bass guitar, banjo, piano, xylophone, vibraphone, English Horn, oboe, drums, recorder[1]
Years active	1999–present
Labels	Asthmatic Kitty Sounds Familyre Orchard
Associated acts	Cryptacize, Danielson Famile, Denison Witmer, Marzuki, My Brightest Diamond, Rosie Thomas, The Welcome Wagon, The National, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner
Website	www.asthmatickitty.com/sufjan-stevens

Sufjan Stevens ( /ˈsuːfjɑːn/ SOOF-yahn; born July 1, 1975) is an American singer-songwriter and musician born in Detroit, Michigan. Stevens first began releasing his music on Asthmatic Kitty, a label co-founded with his stepfather, beginning with the 1999 release, A Sun Came. He is best known for his 2005 album, Illinois, which hit number one in the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart, and for the song "Chicago".

Stevens has released albums of varying styles, from the electronica of Enjoy Your Rabbit and the lo-fi folk of Seven Swans to the symphonic instrumentation of Illinois and Christmas-themed Songs for Christmas. Stevens makes use of a variety of instruments, often playing many of them himself on the same recording,^[2] and writes music in various time signatures. Though he has repeatedly stated an intent to separate his beliefs from his music,^[3][4] Stevens also freely draws from the Bible and other spiritual traditions, incorporating mystical elements into his music often.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Stevens was born in Detroit and lived there until the age of nine, when his family moved to Petoskey, Michigan. In Petoskey he attended the Petoskey High School, the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy and graduated from Harbor Light Christian School. He went on to attend Hope College in Holland, Michigan and earned a Master of Fine Arts from The New School in New York City.^[5]

Sufjan is an Arabic or Persian name^[6] meaning "comes with a sword".^[7] It predates Islam and most famously belonged to Abu Sufyan, a figure from early Islamic history. The name was given to Stevens by the founder of Subud, an inter-faith spiritual community to which his parents belonged when he was born.^[8]

A multi-instrumentalist, Stevens is known for his use of the banjo, but also plays guitar, piano, drums, and several other instruments, often playing all of these on his albums through the use of multitrack recording. While in school, he studied the oboe and English horn, which he also plays on his albums. This multitude of instruments, including string and horn orchestrations, figure prominently in his compositions, giving his music a symphonic sound.

Stevens currently lives in Kensington, Brooklyn, in New York City,^[9] where he makes up the Brooklyn staff of Asthmatic Kitty Records.^[10] His brother Marzuki Stevens is a nationally recognized marathon runner.^[11]

Career[link]

Stevens performing at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee

Stevens began his musical career as a member of Marzuki, a folk-rock band from Holland, Michigan. He also played (and continues to play) various instruments for Danielson Famile. While in school at Hope College, Stevens wrote and recorded his debut solo album, A Sun Came, which he released on Asthmatic Kitty Records. He later moved to New York City, where he was enrolled in a writing program at the New School for Social Research.

While in New York, Stevens composed and recorded the music for his second album, Enjoy Your Rabbit, a song cycle based around the animals of the Chinese Zodiac that delved into electronica.

Stevens followed this with the first album to be released as a part of his "Fifty States Project", a collection of folk songs and instrumentals inspired by his home state of Michigan. The result, the expansive Michigan included odes to cities including Detroit and Flint, the Upper Peninsula, and vacation areas such as Tahquamenon Falls. Melded into the scenic descriptions and characters are his own declarations of faith, sorrow, love, and the regeneration of Michigan.

Following the release of Michigan, Stevens compiled a collection of songs recorded previously into a side project, the album Seven Swans, which was released in March 2004.

Next he released the second in the 50 states project, titled Illinois. Among the subjects explored on Illinois are the cities of Chicago, Decatur and Jacksonville; the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, the state's observance of a holiday in honor of Casimir Pulaski, the poet Carl Sandburg, and the serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

Over the 2005 winter holidays, Stevens recorded an album with Rosie Thomas and Denison Witmer playing banjo and providing vocals. In April 2006, Pitchfork erroneously announced that Stevens and Thomas were having a baby together, but were forced to print a retraction.^[12][13][14] Witmer and Thomas later admitted it was an April Fools' prank.^[15] In December 2006, the collaborative recordings were digitally released by Nettwerk as a Rosie Thomas album titled These Friends of Mine. The album was released in physical form on March 13, 2007.

On September 11, 2006, in Nashville, Tennessee, Stevens debuted a new composition, a ten minute-plus piece titled "Majesty Snowbird".^[16][17] On November 21, 2006, a five CD box set Songs for Christmas was released, which contains originals and Christmas standards recorded every year since 2001 (except 2004). Stevens undertook in the project initially as an exercise to make himself 'appreciate' Christmas more.^[18] The songs were the work of an annual collaboration between Stevens and different collaborators, including minister Vito Aiuto; the songs themselves were distributed to friends and family.

In April 2007, in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, Stevens made unannounced appearances on Thomas's tour in support of this album. In 2007 he did a Take-Away Show acoustic video session shot by Vincent Moon standing on a roof in Cincinnati.^[19] In 2007, he played shows sporadically, including playing at the Kennedy Center to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Millennium Stage concerts.^[20] He was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music to create a "music and film work" titled The BQE, described as "a symphonic and cinematic exploration of New York City's infamous Brooklyn-Queens Expressway".^[21] It premiered at BAM's Next Wave festival on November 1–3, 2007.^[22] Stevens has also worked as an essayist, contributing to Asthmatic Kitty Records' "Sidebar" feature and Topic Magazine.^[23] He wrote the introduction to the 2007 edition of The Best American Nonrequired Reading, a short story about his early childhood education and learning to read titled How I Trumped Rudolf Steiner and Overcame the Tribulations of Illiteracy, One Snickers Bar at a Time.^[24][25] That winter, he hosted an "Xmas Song Exchange Contest" in which winner Alec Duffy won exclusive rights to the original Stevens song "The Lonely Man of Winter." The track has never been uploaded, and can now only be heard by attending private listening parties at Duffy's home in Brooklyn.^[26][27]

Stevens has contributed to the music of Denison Witmer, Soul Junk, Half-handed Cloud, Brother Danielson, Danielson Famile, Serena Maneesh, Castanets, Will Stratton, Shannon Stephens, Clare & the Reasons, and Liz Janes. In 2007 alone, Stevens played piano on The National's album Boxer, produced and contributed many instrumental tracks to Rosie Thomas's album These Friends of Mine, multiple instruments on Ben + Vesper's album All This Could Kill You and oboe and vocals to David Garland's new album Noise in You.

He has contributed covers of Tim Buckley ("She Is"), Joni Mitchell ("Free Man in Paris"), Daniel Johnston ("Worried Shoes"), John Fahey ("Variation on 'Commemorative Transfiguration & Communion at Magruder Park"), The Innocence Mission ("The Lakes of Canada"), Bob Dylan ("Ring Them Bells") and The Beatles ("What Goes On") to various tribute albums. His versions of "Free Man in Paris" and "What Goes On" are notable for only retaining the lyrics of the original, as Stevens has taken his own interpretation on the melody and arrangement. His rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" has a similar rearranged melody and arrangement as well as a whole new verse.^[28]

His song "The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders" was featured in the 2006 British comedy-drama Driving Lessons, starring Harry Potter's Julie Walters and Rupert Grint. In 2008, he produced Welcome to the Welcome Wagon, the debut album of Brooklyn-based husband and wife duo Vito and Monique Auito, The Welcome Wagon.

In February 2009, Stevens contributed "You Are the Blood" to the AIDS benefit album Dark Was the Night produced by the Red Hot Organization. In April 2009, Stevens uploaded a song about director Sofia Coppola online.^[29] This song was written while Stevens was in college, from a series of songs about names.

Stevens recalled:

"[...] A few weeks later, our dog got hit by a snowplow and I forgot all about the problem of names. Until college, when I learned to play the guitar, and, as an exercise, started writing songs (very poorly executed) in the same way that Henry Ford produced the automobile: assembly-line-style. I wrote songs for the days of the week (poor Monday!). Songs for the planets (poor Pluto!). Songs for the Apostles (poor Judas!). And, finally, when all else failed, I started a series of songs for names. [...] Each piece was a rhetorical, philosophical, musical rumination on all the possible names I had entertained years before when my parents had given me the one chance to change my own. Oh fates! I sang these songs in the privacy of my dorm room, behind closed doors, pillows and cushions stuffed in the air vents so no one would hear. And then I almost failed Latin class, my grades plummeted, my social life dissolved into ping pong tournaments in the residence halls, and, gradually, my interest in music (or anything divine, creative, fruitful, enriching) completely waned. I turned to beer. And cigarettes. And TV sitcoms. And candy bars. Oh well! A perfectly good youth wasted on junk food! That is, until a few months ago, when I came across some of the old name songs, stuffed onto tape cassettes, 4-track recorders, forgotten boxes, forgotten shelves, forgotten hard drives. It was like finding an old diary, or a high school yearbook, senior picture with lens flare and pockmarks, slightly cute and embarrassing. What was I thinking? [...]"^[30]

In September 2009, Stevens began performing four new songs while on his Fall tour, "All Delighted People", "Impossible Soul", "Too Much" and "Age of Adz".^[31] That year Stevens contributed to an album with his step father, Lowell Brams, entitled Music For Insomnia. The album was released December 8, 2009.^[32]

In November 2009, Stevens admitted to Exclaim! Magazine, in regard to the fact that he recently called his fifty-state project a joke, that "I don't really have as much faith in my work as I used to, but I think that's healthy. I think it's allowed me to be less precious about how I work and write. And maybe it's okay for us to take it less seriously."^[33]

In June 2010, The National's Bryce Dessner claimed Stevens is currently at work on his next full length album and stated the band is playing on the new album.^[34]

The Fifty States Project[link]

Beginning with Michigan, Stevens announced an intent to write an album for each of the fifty U.S. states.

Stevens spent the second half of 2004 researching and writing material for the second of these projects, this time focusing his efforts on Illinois. As with Michigan, Stevens used the state of Illinois as a leaping-off point for his more personal explorations of faith, family, love, and location. Though slated for general release on July 5, 2005, the album was briefly delayed by legal issues regarding the use of Superman in the original album cover artwork. In the double vinyl release, a balloon sticker has been placed over Superman on the cover art of the first 5,000 copies. The next printings had an empty space where the Superman image was, as with the CD release.^[35]

The widely acclaimed Illinois was the highest-rated album of 2005 on the Metacritic review aggregator site, based on glowing reviews from Pitchfork Media, The Onion A/V Club, Spin, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, KEXP, and The Guardian.^[36] The 2006 PLUG Independent Music Awards awarded Stevens with the Album Of The Year, Best Album Art/Packaging, and Male Artist Of The Year. Pitchfork Media, No Ripcord, and Paste Magazine named Illinois as the editors' choice for best album of 2005 and Stevens received the 2005 Pantheon prize, awarded to noteworthy albums selling fewer than 500,000 copies, for Illinois.^[37] In April 2006, Stevens announced that 21 pieces of music he had culled from the Illinois recording sessions would be incorporated into a new album, called The Avalanche,^[38] which was released on July 11, 2006.

The next states to be taken on in the project have been reported as Oregon and Rhode Island.^[39] In late 2005 and early 2006 Stevens played a new instrumental track titled "The Maple River". There are various Maple Rivers in the U.S., in Minnesota, Iowa, North or South Dakota. There is also evidence to suggest the possibility of a New York album. Not only is Stevens's current residence in New York City, but at the footnote of his writing piece titled "Friend Rock", Stevens stated that he was reading a biography on Robert Moses, who is a notable New Yorker.^[40] In late 2007, Stevens debuted several new songs about New York, including "BQE", a track about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, one of many urban developments designed and spearheaded by Robert Moses.

Stevens made brief mention to a possible collaboration with Asthmatic Kitty labelmate Rafter on an album about California.^[41] Stevens also recorded "The Lord God Bird"^[42] about the reported sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct, in Arkansas (known as the 'lord god' or 'great god' bird because of its breathtaking appearance). This was in connection with a National Public Radio piece in which "independent radio producers Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister were curious about how Stevens writes his songs."

"Sufjan Stevens is not going to write a record for each of the 50 states after all" was the original text included on the online liner notes for their Mews Too: An Asthmatic Kitty Compilation disc released on February 7, 2006.^[43] This statement was possibly included as a joke, as the text has since been removed and the current liner notes related to Stevens reads, "18. Sufjan Stevens can fold a fitted-sheet (he once worked as a professional folder in a commercial laundromat)."

In an article published on February 24, 2008, in New York Magazine, Stevens implied that New Jersey could be the target of his next state project. After he gave a brief quote about the New Jersey Turnpike, he was asked, "So is this the next musical project?" Sufjan joked, "New Jersey, the musical—an ode to the turnpike."^[44]

The Guardian published an interview with Stevens on October 27, 2009, in which he stated in relation to the Fifty States Project: "I have no qualms about admitting it was a promotional gimmick".^[45]

[edit] The BQE

On May 31, 2007, Asthmatic Kitty announced that Stevens would be premiering a new project titled The BQE in early November 2007. The project, dubbed a "symphonic and cinematic exploration of New York City's infamous Brooklyn-Queens Expressway", was manifested in a live show. The BQE featured an original film by Stevens (shot in Super 8 mm film and standard 16 mm), while Stevens and a backing orchestra provided the live soundtrack. The performance used 36 performers which included a small band, a wind and brass ensemble, string players, horn players, and hula hoopers. There were no lyrics to the music. The BQE was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of their Next Wave Festival and performed on three consecutive nights from November 1–3, 2007.

The performance sold out the 2,109 seat BAM Opera House without any advertising.^[46] After three weeks of rehearsing the piece with the three dozen musicians^[47] involved, he presented the 30-minute composition. The BQE was followed by an additional one hour of concert by Stevens and his orchestra. The BQE won the 2008 Brendan Gill Prize.^[48]

The multimedia package was released on October 20, 2009. The release included a CD of the show's soundtrack, a DVD of Brooklyn-Queens Expressway footage that accompanied the original performance (not a film of the performance itself), a 40-page booklet with liner notes and photos, and a stereoscopic 3D View-Master reel. A limited edition version that features the soundtrack on 180-gram vinyl and a 40-page BQE-themed comic book starring the show's hula hooping wonder women, the Hooper Heroes, was also released.

[edit] Run Rabbit Run

On October 6, 2009 Stevens' label released an album of versions of his 2001 album Enjoy Your Rabbit rearranged for strings and performed by the Osso String Quartet, entitled Run Rabbit Run.^[49]

[edit] All Delighted People and The Age of Adz

Stevens returned to recording and touring in 2010 after a hiatus—he's pictured here performing in 2011

In 2010, Stevens was featured on The National's album High Violet, released in May, and sang backing vocals for the band on The Late Show with David Letterman.^[50] Following the release of High Violet, band frontman Matt Berninger mentioned that Stevens was recording a new album in the band's studio and that The National would appear on some of the tracks. In early August, Stevens announced North American tour dates across dozens of cities. On August 20, 2010, Stevens suddenly and unexpectedly released a new collection of tracks, the All Delighted People EP, for digital download. The EP is built around two versions of the title track, "All Delighted People."^[51] The EP surprisingly rose to #27 on the Billboard 200 albums solely through its digital sales.^[52] On August 26, Asthmatic Kitty announced that Stevens would release his newest full length album, The Age of Adz, on October 12.^[53] NPR streamed the album until it was released on October 12, 2010.^[54]

The two albums featured a wide range of arrangements, from orchestral to electronic. Song lengths were also extended; the track "Djohariah" from All Delighted People is 17 minutes long, while "Impossible Soul" from The Age of Adz is 25 minutes long. The albums also feature many styles from disco to folk.

Stevens has stated in interviews that in 2009/10, he suffered from a mysterious debilitating virus infection that affected his nervous system. He experienced chronic pain and was forced to stop working on music for several months.^[55] He said: "The Age of Adz, is, in some ways, a result of that process of working through health issues and getting much more in touch with my physical self. That's why I think the record's really obsessed with sensation and has a hysterical melodrama to it."^[56]

On October 12, 2010, Stevens began his North American tour in Montreal, featuring virtually all new material. The tour lasted just over a month and ended on November 15, 2010 in New York.

Stevens toured Australia and New Zealand in early 2011, featured as part of The Sydney Festival, and appeared on-stage with The National during the last of three sold-out Auckland shows.^[57] He also toured Europe and the United Kingdom in April and May 2011, playing there for the first time in five years.^[58] His shows mostly consisted of new material, but he did play many older tracks from Seven Swans and Illinois. Stevens ended the Age of Adz tour with two shows in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York.

On February 27, 2012, it was announced Stevens would release a collaborative EP called Beak & Claw on March 20th with artists Son Lux and Serengeti under the name s / s / s on the Anticon record label.^[59]

Themes[link]

Stevens' stage shows feature elaborate lighting, costumes, and choreography

Many of his songs have spiritual allusions. He says he does not try to make music for the sake of preaching. "I don't think music media is the real forum for theological discussions," says Stevens. "I think I've said things and sung about things that probably weren't appropriate for this kind of forum. And I just feel like it's not my work or my place to be making claims and statements, because I often think it's misunderstood."^[4]

Such themes are most notable on his album Seven Swans, the songs "Abraham", "Seven Swans", "To Be Alone with You", "He Woke Me Up Again", "We Won't Need Legs to Stand" and "The Transfiguration" refer to Christian themes. In "Abraham", Stevens recounts the Old Testament story in the Book of Genesis. The lyrics of "The Transfiguration" appear to follow the Biblical accounts of Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9: 1–8, and Luke 9:28–36. The title of "All the Trees of the Fields Will Clap Their Hands" is a quote from Isaiah 55:12.^[60]

During a 2004 interview with Adrian Pannett for Comes with a Smile magazine, when asked how important faith was to his music, he responded, "I don't like talking about that stuff in the public forum because, I think, certain themes and convictions are meant for personal conversation."^[3]

Sufjan's most recent music features less clear statements about religion and spirituality, arousing question of his current ideas on spirituality. In an interview released on October 12, 2010 (the same day as Sufjan's album The Age of Adz released), Sufjan confirmed he is a Christian.^[61]

Discography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (January 2011)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sufjan Stevens

• Sufjan Stevens – official site
• Asthmatic Kitty – label page
• Sounds Familyre – label page
• Purevolume – official Purevolume site
• Sufjan Stevens – Rateyourmusic
• Photos from Town Hall
• Interview with Vish Khanna
• Interview with Sufjan Stevens by Gerry Visco, New York Press, "Give Me Your Ugly"
• "All Quiet on the Midwestern Front," Cover Story by Susan Moll, Stomp & Stammer, September 2005
• Sufjan Stevens performance from Austin City Limits, September 17, 2006
• Live concert from the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, January 2011 Sufjan Stevens: "Age of Adz", Sydney Opera House, January 2011.

Paul Douglas
United States Senator from Illinois
In office January 3, 1949 – January 3, 1967
Preceded by	Charles W. Brooks
Succeeded by	Charles H. Percy
Personal details
Born	Paul Howard Douglas (1892-03-26)March 26, 1892 Salem, Massachusetts
Died	September 24, 1976(1976-09-24) (aged 84) Washington, D.C.
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Dorothy Wolff Douglas, divorced Emily Taft Douglas, deceased
Alma mater	Bowdoin College Columbia University Harvard University
Profession	Economist
Religion	Quaker
Military service
Service/branch	United States Marine Corps
Rank	Lieutenant Colonel
Battles/wars	World War II
Awards	Bronze Star Purple Heart (2)

Paul Howard Douglas (March 26, 1892 – September 24, 1976) was an American politician and economist. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a U.S. Senator from Illinois for eighteen years, from 1949 to 1967. During his Senate career, he was a prominent member of the Liberal coalition.^[1]

Born in Massachusetts and raised in Maine, Douglas graduated from Bowdoin College and Columbia University. He served as a professor of economics at several schools, most notably the University of Chicago, and earned a reputation as a reformer while a member of the Chicago City Council (1939–1942). During World War II, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel and becoming known as a war hero.

He was married to Emily Taft Douglas, a U.S. Representative from Illinois's At-large district (1945–1947).

Early years[link]

Douglas was born on March 26, 1892 in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts. When he was four, his mother died of natural causes and his father remarried. His father was an abusive husband and his stepmother, unable to obtain a divorce, left her husband and took Douglas and his older brother to Onawa, Maine in Piscataquis County, where her brother and uncle had built a resort in the woods.

Academia and family life[link]

Douglas graduated from Bowdoin College with a Phi Beta Kappa key in 1913. He then moved on to Columbia University, where he earned a master's degree in 1915 and a Ph.D. in economics in 1921. In 1915, he married Dorothy Wolff, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College who also earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University.

From 1915 to 1920, the Douglases moved six times. Paul studied at Harvard University; taught at the University of Illinois and at Oregon's Reed College, served as a mediator of labor disputes for the Emergency Fleet Corporation of Pennsylvania and taught at University of Washington. When working for the Emergency Fleet Corporation he read John Woolman's journals. When teaching in Seattle, he joined the Religious Society of Friends.

In 1919, Douglas took a job teaching economics at the University of Chicago. Although Douglas enjoyed his job, his wife was unable to obtain a job at the university due to anti-nepotism rules. When she obtained a job at Smith College, in Massachusetts, she persuaded her husband to move the family there. He would then start teaching at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Douglas soon decided that the marriage situation was untenable^{[citation needed]} and, in 1930, the couple divorced, with Dorothy taking custody of their four children and Douglas returning to Chicago. The following year, Douglas met and married Emily Taft Douglas, daughter of sculptor Lorado Taft and distant cousin of former President William Howard Taft. Emily was a political activist, former actress, and subsequent one-term congresswoman at-large from Illinois (1945–47).

Douglas was listed as a supporter of banking reforms suggested by University of Chicago economists in 1933 that were later referred to as the "Chicago plan".^[2] In 1939, he coauthored with five other notable economists a draft proposal titled A Program for Monetary Reform. The Chicago plan and A Program for Monetary Reform generated much interest and discussion among lawmakers, but the suggested reforms did not result in any new legislation.

Douglas is probably best-known to economics students as the co-author of the 1928 article with Charles Cobb that first laid out the Cobb-Douglas production function.

Government service and city politics[link]

As the 1920s drew to a close, Douglas got more involved in politics. He served as an economic advisor to Republican Governor Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania and Democratic Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York. Along with Chicago lawyer Harold L. Ickes, he launched a campaign against public utility tycoon Samuel Insull's stock market manipulations.^{[citation needed]} Working with the state legislature, he helped draft laws regulating utilities and establishing old-age pensions and unemployment insurance. By the early 1930s, he was vice chairman of the League for Independent Political Action, a member of the Farmer-Labor Party's national committee, and treasurer of the American Commonwealth Political Federation.

A registered Independent, Douglas felt that the Democratic Party was too corrupt and the Republican Party was too reactionary, views that he expressed in a 1932 book, The Coming of a New Party, in which he called for the creation of a party similar to the British Labour Party.^{[citation needed]} That year, he voted for Socialist candidate Norman Thomas for President of the United States.

After Roosevelt's victory in the election, Douglas, at the recommendation of his friend Harold Ickes, was appointed to serve on the Consumers' Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration. In 1935, however, the Supreme Court ruled that the Administration was unconstitutional and it was abolished.

That year, Douglas made his first foray into electoral politics, campaigning for the endorsement of the local Republican Party for mayor of Chicago. Although the party endorsed someone else, Douglas continued to work with them to get their candidate elected to the city council from the 5th Ward. A strong Socialist candidate split the reform vote, however, and Democrat James Cusack, a member of the Cook County political machine, was elected.

Four years later, in 1939, Cusack came up for re-election, and Douglas joined a group of reform-minded Independents in attempting to select a suitable challenger. The group decided that Douglas was the best candidate for the position and he was summarily drafted. During the election, Mayor Ed Kelly, a leader of the machine who was in a tough fight for re-election, attempted to shore up his reputation by lending his support to Douglas' campaign. With Kelly's help, and his own dogged campaigning, Douglas managed a narrow victory over Cusack in a runoff election.

A reformer on a council full of machine politicians and grafters, Douglas usually found himself in the minority. His attempts to reform the public education system and lower public transportation fares were met with derision and he typically ended up on the losing end of 49-1 votes. "I have three degrees", Douglas once said after a particularly close-fought rout. "I have been associated with intelligent and intellectual people for many years. Some of these aldermen haven't gone through the fifth grade. But they're the smartest bunch of bastards I ever saw grouped together."^{[citation needed]}

In 1942, Douglas officially joined the Democratic Party and ran for its nomination for the United States Senate. He had the support of a cadre of left-wing activists, but the machine supported the state's at-large Congressman Raymond S. McKeough for the nomination. On the day of the primary, Douglas carried 99 of the state's 102 counties, but McKeough's strong support in Cook County allowed him to win a slim majority. He would go on to lose in the general election to incumbent Republican Senator C. Wayland Brooks.

Military service[link]

As alderman, Douglas had worked with Chicago Daily News publisher Frank Knox in fighting corruption in Chicago. Knox, who had been Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1936, had become Secretary of the Navy, thus responsible for both the navy and the Marine Corps.

Shortly after losing the primary, Douglas resigned from the Chicago City Council and, with the aid of Knox enlisted in the United States Marine Corps as a private at the age of 50. As a member of the 57th Street Meeting of the Quakers, Douglas recognized that joining the Marines was contrary to the traditional testimony of that group against war and offered to resign his membership; the meeting refused to release him.^[3] Promoted to corporal, then to sergeant, Douglas was kept stateside, writing training manuals, and giving inspirational speeches to troops. He was told he was "too old to go overseas 'as an enlisted man'".^{[citation needed]} With the aid of Knox, and of Knox assistant Adlai Stevenson, Douglas was commissioned as an officer, and was subsequently sent to the Pacific theater of operations with the 1st Marine Division.

On the second day of the Battle of Peleliu, Captain Douglas finally saw action when his unit waded into the fray. He earned a Bronze Star for carrying ammunition to the front lines under enemy fire and earned his first Purple Heart when he was grazed by shrapnel while carrying flamethrower ammunition to the front lines.^[4] In that six week battle, while investigating some random fire shootings, Douglas was shot at as he uncovered a two-foot-wide cave. He then killed the Japanese soldier inside at which point he wondered whether his enemy might be an economics professor from the University of Tokyo.^[5]

A few months later, during the Battle of Okinawa, Douglas earned his second Purple Heart. A volunteer rifleman in an infantry platoon, he was helping to carry wounded from 3rd Battalion 5th Marines along the Naha-Shuri line when a burst of machine gun fire tore through his left arm, severing the main nerve and leaving it permanently disabled.^[4]

After a thirteen-month stay in the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland, Douglas was given an honorable discharge as a Lieutenant Colonel with full disability pay.

Campaign for the Senate[link]

While Douglas had been serving in the Marines, his wife, Emily, had been nominated to run against isolationist Republican Congressman Stephen A. Day, who had succeeded Raymond McKeough. Although she had defeated Day in the 1944 election, a Republican upsurge had unseated her in 1946, the same year that Douglas left the Marines.

Deciding to enter politics once again, Douglas let it be generally known that he wished to seek the office of Governor of Illinois in 1948. Cook County machine boss Jacob Arvey, however, had a different plan. At the time, several scandals had broken out over the machine's activities, and Arvey decided that Douglas, a scholar and war hero with a reputation for incorruptibility, would be the perfect nominee to run against Senator Brooks. Since Brooks was hugely popular in the state and had a large campaign warchest, Arvey decided that there was no danger of Douglas winning.^{[citation needed]}. The top 2/3 of the Illinois Democratic slate for the 1948 election then became Paul Douglas for senator and Adlai Stevenson for governor.

At the outset of the campaign, Douglas' chances looked slim. As a delegate to the 1948 Democratic National Convention, he had tried to draft General Dwight D. Eisenhower for President, calling President Harry S. Truman "incompetent."^{[citation needed]}

Douglas, however, proved to be a tenacious campaigner. He stumped across the state in a Jeep station wagon for the Marshall Plan, civil rights, repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, more public housing, and more social security programs. During six months of non-stop campaigning, he traveled more than 40,000 miles (64,000 km) around the state and delivered more than 1,100 speeches. When Senator Brooks refused to debate him, Douglas debated an empty chair, switching from seat to seat as he provided both his own answers and Brooks'.

On Election Day, Douglas won an upset victory, taking 55 percent of the vote and defeating the incumbent by a margin of more than 407,000 votes. Stevenson won the race for governor by a wide margin, but there was no coattails effect from president to senator to governor; President Truman, campaigning for re-election, won the state by a slim 33,600 votes.

United States Senator[link]

Douglas (3rd from left) in the Oval Office (1949)

As a member of the Senate, Douglas soon earned a reputation as an unconventional liberal, concerned as much with fiscal discipline as with passing the Fair Deal. He was a passionate crusader for civil rights (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. described him as "the greatest of all the Senators"^{[citation needed]}) and earned fame as an opponent of pork barrel spending. Early in his first term, he grabbed headlines when, magnifying glass and atlas in hand, he strode to the Senate floor and, referring to a pork barrel project for the dredging of a river in Maine, defied anyone to find the river in the atlas. When Maine's Owen Brewster objected, and pointed out the millions of dollars in pork going to Illinois, Douglas offered to cut his state's share by 40%.

Appointed to chair the Joint Economic Committee, Douglas led a series of hard-hitting investigations into fiscal mismanagement in government and appeared on the cover of Time.^{[citation needed]} A profile of him in that issue was entitled "The Making of a Maverick."^[6]

As the 1952 presidential election approached, a groundswell of support arose for a Douglas candidacy for President. The National Editorial Association ranked him the second-most-qualified man, after Truman, to receive the Democratic presidential nomination, and a poll of 46 Democratic insiders revealed him to be a favorite for the nomination if Truman stepped aside.

Douglas, however, refused to be considered as a candidate for President, and instead backed the candidacy of Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, a folksy, coonskin cap-wearing populist who had become famous for his televised investigations into organized crime. Douglas stumped across the country for Kefauver and stood next to him at the 1952 Democratic National Convention when Kefauver was defeated by Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson. Four years later, in 1956, he remained publicly neutral, feeling that openly opposing Stevenson's drive for the nomination and supporting Kefauver would damage his standing with his state party.^{[citation needed]}

In addition to his battles for equal rights for African Americans and less pork barrel spending, Douglas was also known for his fights for environmental protection, public housing, and truth in lending laws. He opposed real estate redlining, but was forced to allow a 1949 provision in a public housing bill making it possible for suburbs to reject low-income housing. He also authored the Consumer Credit Protection Act, a bill that forced lenders to state the terms of a loan in plain language and restricted the ability of lenders to discriminate on the basis of gender, race, or income. Although the bill was not passed during his term of office, it became law in 1968.

Defeat and retirement[link]

During the 1966 election, Douglas, then 74, ran for a fourth term in office against Republican Charles H. Percy, a wealthy businessman. A confluence of events, including Douglas' age, unhappiness within the Democratic Party^{[citation needed]} over his support for the Vietnam War and open housing laws, as well as sympathy for Percy over the recent, unsolved murder of his daughter, caused Douglas to lose the election in an upset.

After losing his seat in the Senate, Douglas taught at the New School, chaired a commission on housing, and wrote books, including an autobiography, In the Fullness of Time.

In the early 1970s, he suffered a stroke and withdrew from public life. On September 24, 1976, he died at his home. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered in Jackson Park near the University of Chicago.

Memorial[link]

A memorial marker at the Marine Corps training base at Parris Island reads:

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	World War II portal
	United States Marine Corps portal

• Douglas, A Program for Monetary Reform (1939)

Notes[link]

References[link]

Cobb, Charles W. and Paul H. Douglas. "A Theory of Production." American Economic Review 18: Suppl.(1928). pp 139-156.

External links[link]

• Paul Douglas at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• [www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/phdouglas.html Biographical Essay from University of Chicago]

v t e United States Senators from Illinois Class 2 Thomas McLean Baker Robinson McRoberts Semple S. Douglas Browning Richardson Yates Logan Davis Cullom Lewis McCormick Deneen Lewis Slattery Brooks P. Douglas Percy Simon Durbin Class 3 Edwards McLean Kane Ewing Young Breese Shields Trumbull Oglesby Logan Farwell Palmer Mason Hopkins Lorimer Sherman McKinley Glenn Dieterich Lucas Dirksen Smith Stevenson III Dixon Moseley Braun Fitzgerald Obama Burris Kirk

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (May 2009)

Adlai Stevenson III
United States Senator from Illinois
In office November 17, 1970 – January 2, 1981
Preceded by	Ralph Tyler Smith
Succeeded by	Alan J. Dixon
Personal details
Born	Adlai Ewing Stevenson III (1930-10-10) October 10, 1930 (age 81) Chicago, Illinois
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic
Alma mater	Harvard University
Religion	Unitarian
Military service
Service/branch	United States Marine Corps
Rank	Captain

Adlai Ewing Stevenson III (born October 10, 1930) is an American politician of the Democratic Party. He represented the state of Illinois in the United States Senate from 1970 until 1981.

Education, military service, and early career[link]

Adlai Stevenson III was born in Chicago. He attended the Milton Academy in Massachusetts, Harrow School in England, and Harvard College.

He received a law degree in 1957 from Harvard Law School.

Stevenson was commissioned as a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1952, served in Korea and was discharged from active duty in 1954. He continued to serve in the Marine Reserves and was discharged in 1961 as a captain.

In 1957, Stevenson went to work as a clerk for a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court and worked there until 1958 when he joined the law firm of Brown and Platt.

Illinois political career[link]

In 1964, Stevenson was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives as an at-large representative due to reapportionment problems, serving from 1965 to 1967.^[1][2] He then served as Illinois Treasurer (1967–1970).^[3]

United States Senate[link]

After U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.) died in office in 1969 and Ralph Tyler Smith was appointed to the seat, Stevenson defeated Smith in a 1970 special election by a 58% to 42% margin to fill Dirksen's unexpired term. Stevenson introduced legislation requiring an end to all foreign aid to South Vietnam by June 30, 1975.^[4] He authored the International Banking Act, the Stevenson Wydler-Technology Innovation Act and its companion, the Bayh Dole Act, to foster cooperative research, organize national laboratories for technology utilization and commercialization, permit private sector interests in government funded research. He was the first Chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee charged with implementing a code of ethics he helped draft. Stevenson was also chairman of a Special Senate Committee which reorganized the Senate and served on the Democratic Policy Committee. Inter alia, he also conducted the first in depth Congressional study of terrorism as Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Collection and Production of Intelligence, leading to introduction of the Comprehensive Counter Terrorism Act of 1971 with warnings of "spectacular acts of disruption and destruction" and an amendment which proposed a reduction of assistance for Israel by $200 million until such time as the President could certify that the settlements polices of the newly elected Likud Government of Israel were consistent with U.S. policy. His amendment received 7 votes - making his point, that given a choice between supporting the U.S. and the "Israeli Lobby", Congress would support the latter.

Stevenson was re-elected to the seat in 1974, and in 1980 declined to stand for re-election, thus serving in the U.S. Senate from 1970 to 1981.

Stevenson was encouraged to run for President in 1976 by Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, declined and was one of the finalists for Vice-President at the Democratic Convention that year. Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota was nominated for vice president.^[5]

Post-Senate political career[link]

Stevenson ran for Governor of Illinois in 1982 and 1986, losing both elections to James R. Thompson. In 1982 the initial vote count showed Stevenson winning; however, the final official count showed him losing by 1/7 of one percent. Stevenson promptly petitioned the Illinois Supreme Court for a recount and presented evidence of widespread election irregularities, including evidence of a failed punch card system for tabulation of votes (later to become infamous in the presidential election of 2000). Three days before the gubernatorial inauguration, the Court, by a one vote margin, denied the recount, asserting that the Illinois recount statute was unconstitutional.

However, the Illinois Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit, and did so in a curious way. Instead of following the normal standard that decides a motion to dismiss, the court did not assume, for purposes of the motion, that the facts stated in the complaint were true. Instead, the court went "behind the pleadings" to look at the conduct of the original partial recount and then dismissed the case because it said that Adlai Stevenson had no reasonable cause to complain about the conduct of the counting and recounting activities. A grand jury later determined that Adlai Stevenson had unwittingly benefited from some 100,000 illegal ballots that had been cast in Chicago in the 1982 gubernatorial election. "U.S. to probe primary vote fraud," Chicago Tribune, March 11, 1987. The Illinois legislature later changed election contest procedures based on the court's ruling.

In the 1986 campaign for Governor, in a fluke, two followers of Lyndon LaRouche won the Democratic Party primary nominations for Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State. Stevenson objected to their platform and refused to appear on the same ticket. Instead, he organized the Solidarity Party to provide an alternate slate for Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State, which was duly endorsed by the regular Democratic organization. Persuading Democrats to vote a regular Democratic ticket and then cross over to also vote for the Solidarity candidates for Governor, Lt. Governor and Secretary of State was doomed to fail; however, Stevenson and the candidate for Lieutenant Governor position, Mike Howlett, won 40% of the vote.

Post-political career[link]

Since leaving the Senate, Stevenson has been active in business and cultural relations with east Asia. He is chairman of SC&M Investment Management Corporation, and co-chairman of HuaMei Capital Company (the first Chinese-American investment bank).

He has also held many positions with non-profit organizations in this area. He has served as chairman of the Japan-America Society of Chicago, the Midwest U.S.-Japan Association, and the Midwest U.S.-China Association, and as President of the U.S. Committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC). He is also co-chairman of the PECC's Financial Market Development Project, a member of the U.S.-Korea Wisemen Council, and sits on the Board of Directors of the Korea Economic Institute.

Stevenson has been honored by the government of Japan with the Order of the Sacred Treasure, and is an Honorary Professor of Renmin University in China.

He is Chairman of the international Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy housed at the family home near Libertyville, Illinois. The Center brings practitioners from the real world of politics together with scholars and experts from many parts of the world to address systemic challenges to democratic systems of government.

Political family history[link]

Stevenson's great-grandfather Adlai E. Stevenson I was vice president of the United States (1893–1897). His grandfather Lewis G. Stevenson was Illinois secretary of state (1914–1917). His father, Adlai Stevenson, was governor of Illinois, Ambassador to the United Nations, and two time Democratic presidential nominee. Actor McLean Stevenson was his second cousin once removed.

Adlai Stevenson IV, Stevenson III's son, became a television reporter in Chicago in the 1980s. It is reported that when asked if he liked his name, he said he intended to become "Adlai the Last"^{[citation needed]}. However, in the summer of 1994, Adlai Ewing Stevenson V was born.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Baker, Jean H. (1996). The Stevensons: A Biography of An American Family. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-03874-2. 

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Adlai Stevenson III at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Political Science: Analysis of the 1986 election "debacle" in Illinois

v t e United States Senators from Illinois Class 2 Thomas McLean Baker Robinson McRoberts Semple S. Douglas Browning Richardson Yates Logan Davis Cullom Lewis McCormick Deneen Lewis Slattery Brooks P. Douglas Percy Simon Durbin Class 3 Edwards McLean Kane Ewing Young Breese Shields Trumbull Oglesby Logan Farwell Palmer Mason Hopkins Lorimer Sherman McKinley Glenn Dieterich Lucas Dirksen Smith Stevenson III Dixon Moseley Braun Fitzgerald Obama Burris Kirk