THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603280570
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY ANN EGERTON
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
THE STEVENSONS
A Biography of An American Family
JEAN H. BAKER
W.W. Norton. 479 pp. $30.
In The Stevensons, Jean H. Baker tells the eight-generation saga of a family since its arrival from Scotland in pre-Revolutionary America, recounting the changes that took place in this country over those 250 years. The Stevenson family produced a vice president, a governor who twice became the Democratic Party's presidential nominee and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and a U.S. senator. Their history reflects this nation's rise to power and recent decline.
The characters of the three Adlai Ewing Stevensons who dominate the book exhibit America's mood and fortune at their eras - the 1880s and '90s and mid-20th century. Baker, the author of Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography and a history professor at Goucher College in Baltimore, observes that the Stevensons' cumulative relationship to America is more significant than any of their individual accomplishments.
The Stevensons, like many Americans, were a restless bunch. Searching for religious freedom and inexpensive land, each generation for many years moved, from the Scottish lowlands to northern Ireland after about 1715, then across the Atlantic to Pennsylvania in the 1730s, down to North Carolina in the '60s, some to Kentucky and then north to Illinois.
They traveled with a host of fellow Scottish Presbyterians, many cousins, and changed their name from the English Stephenson to Stevenson during the War of 1812. They were slave-owners and had a knack for amassing land. Tobacco farming was profitable, but it depleted the soil and sent the Stevensons and many others west.
In 1852, the parents of Adlai Ewing Stevenson I settled in Bloomington, Ill. Reflecting the changing lifestyles of many Americans, the Stevensons lived in a small town (population 1,168) for the first time, requiring that Adlai I and his brothers learn something besides farming. Although he made more money from real estate and coal, Adlai learned the law and the art of conciliation, a trademark of his grandson's style. His charm, story-telling skills and love of politics earned him several (undistinguished) sessions in the U.S. Congress and the vice presidency under Grover Cleveland.
Adlai's son Lewis never graduated from high school, was a semi-invalid and spent his life looking for a worthwhile occupation and reliable good health. Lewis' marriage to Helen Davis was grounded in their mutual ill health, but supported by the fortune of Helen's father, who published the local newspaper. They produced daughter Buffie and Adlai II (1900-1965).
Neither parent was dependable in disposition or anything else, and Adlai's going to Choate, a Connecticut boarding school, surely was a relief. His grades there and at Princeton (where his mother rented rooms to keep an eye on him) were average, and he flunked out of Harvard Law School. With a Northwestern law degree, he practiced law in Chicago. Like his father, he married up financially. Suddenly descriptions of Stevensons were modified by such words as ``upper class,'' ``patrician.''
Bored by law, Adlai II edged his way into politics and served as assistant to the secretary of the Navy in Washington. In 1948 he was elected governor of Illinois, and his marriage to Ellen Borden ended. His campaigns for the presidency against Dwight D. Eisenhower depict his diffidence and lack of self-confidence, yet the contradictory notion that he deserved the highest office in the land without the unseemly performance of pressing too much flesh. But his eloquent cries for a moratorium on nuclear testing and an end to the draft were ahead of their time. Baker calls him a ``bit player'' as JFK's and LBJ's ambassador to the United Nations.
Harvard Law School graduate Adlai III served as a U.S. senator during the '70s and enjoys a happy marriage. He has been called ``deeply informed,'' but ``glumly sober, blandly unmetaphorical'' and lacking in his father's wit and charm. He is a merchant banker.
The Stevensons represent a higher level of achievement than most American families, and Baker has written a meticulous and graceful history. MEMO: Ann Egerton is a free-lance writer who lives in Baltimore. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Author Jean H. Baker deals primarily with the three Adlai Ewing
Stevensons (left to right): Vice president to Grover Cleveland; U.N.
ambassador; and U.S. senator. by CNB