Adlai Stevenson

• Vice President to:       Grover Cleveland - Democrat, from New York.
  
  
  • This was Grover Cleveland's second, non-consecutive, term. He served 1893 - 1897. He died in 1908, at the age of 71.
    
    
• Dates Served: Stevenson served as Vice President from 1893 - 1897.
  
• Political Party: Stevenson was a Democrat, from Illinois.
  
• Born: 1835.
  
• Died: 1914, at the age of 79.
  
• The presidential opponents during the 1892 campaign was:
  
  
  • Benjamin Harrison - Republican - Incumbant President
    
    
  • James Weaver - Populist Party - Former US House Representative from Ohio
    
    
• Campaign issues in 1892:
  
  
  • The issue this year was, amazingly, tariffs. The same old story, the same old positions. There was a third party this time around, the Populist Party, campaigning for the nationalization of various industries, such as the Telephone, Telegraph, and Railroad industries, as well as the free coinage of silver. They managed to carry 4 states. The only real drama this year was when President Harrison's wife died of tuberculosis, just 2 weeks before election day. Out of respect for the President's loss the candidates stopped campaigning for the remaining weeks. Cleveland won by a large margin, due to resentment over the unusually high tariffs passed by Harrison 2 years earlier which had dramatically raised consumer prices throughout the country. Grover was back.
    
    
  
  
• Notable Facts about Adlai Stevenson:
  
  
  • Religious affiliation: Adlai was a Presbyterian.
    
    
  • Adlai Stevenson was the grandfather of the Adlai Stevenson who ran for President unsuccessfully in 1952 and 1956 against Dwight D. Eisenhower.
    
    
  • He was also the grandfather of actor McLean Stevenson, who played the role of Col. Henry Blake on the TV show "MASH". McLean the actor and Adlai Jr. the politician were cousins.
    
    
  • Adlai Stevenson was nicknamed "Uncle Adlai" because of his genial nature and quick sense of humor.
    
    
  • Adlai Stevenson Sr. was a lawyer, and began his political career by serving in the US House of Representatives, representing Illinois from 1879 - 1881.
    
    
  • He served as Assistant Postmaster General from 1885 - 1889, appointed by President Cleveland during his first term. While serving in this post, the Republicans nicknamed him "The Headsman" after he fired 40,000 postmasters to make room for Democrat appointees. The Republicans got even when they refused to confirm Cleveland's nomination of Stevenson to a federal court seat in 1889, during his first term.
    
    
  • He was nominated to the Vice Presidency because of his "soft-money" views, which balanced out Cleveland's "hard money" policies.
    
    
  • After his term as Vice President, he ran for Vice President again in 1900 with William Jennings Bryan against William McKinley, but failed.
    
    
  • He ran for governor of Illinois in 1908, but failed again.
    

Notable Events during his Vice Presidency:

• Hawaii not annexed, in 1893. President Cleveland condemned the role of American plantation owners in Hawaii who had orchestrated the overthrow of Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalani in 1893. He withdrew a proposed annexation treaty that had been submitted by President Harrison.
  
  (Hawaii was eventually annexed by the US five years later, in 1898, by President McKinley. In the interim, Hawaii was essentially run by the American plantation owners and missionaries in Hawaii who had staged the overthrow in the hope of America welcoming the islands into the Union. They had staged a protest against the local government and then convinced the American battleships stationed in Pearl Harbor that American lives were in danger, resulting in US soldiers coming ashore "to protect American lives", allowing the protestors to take over the government. Their conspiracy worked, in the long run.)
  
  
• Panic of 1893, caused by railroad failures. Created 4-year long depression, inciting riots in Chicago.
  
  
• The zipper is invented by Whitcomb Judson in Chicago, in 1893. He originally called his invention a "clasp-locker". The name "zipper" is coined by B.F. Goodrich in 1923, in reference to the sound made when opening and closing them.
  
  
• January 7, 1894, the very first movie is filmed. Length, 4 seconds. Thomas Edison points his new invention, the movie camera, at his assistant Fred Ott, who sneezes. The movie industry is born.
  
  
• The Pullman Strike of 1894, in which the Pullman railroad company reduced its employees' wages but kept prices and rent high. (Most employees of the company lived in a "Company Town" outside of Chicago, actually named Pullman, where their employer owned all rental property and was therefore also everyone's landlord). The strike spread throughout the railroad industry, strikes, halting all railroad traffic between Chicago and the West Coast. Cleveland used the military to break the strike, on the basis that "mail obstruction" was at stake, and therefore illegal.
  
  
• US mediation of Venezuela boundary dispute with Britain in South America in 1895.
  
  
• Samuel Horwitz, later to become the Stooge named "Shemp", is born on March 17, 1895. (Later changes last name to Howard)
  
  
• Utah admitted into the Union in 1896.