ADLA1

EWING

See also:

• ADLA1 EWING STEVENSON (1835- )
• STEVENSON, ROBERT (1772-1850)
• STEVENSON, ROBERT LEWIS BALFOUR (1850-1894)

STEVENSON (1835- )  , American political leader, was born in Christian county, Kentucky, on the 23rd of October 1835 . He removed with his family to Bloomington, Illinois, in 1852; was educated at the Illinois Wesleyan University at Bloomington and at Centre College, Danville, Kentucky; and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1857 . He was master in chancery for Woodford county, Illinois, in 186o-1864, and district-attorney for the twenty-third judicial district of that state from 1865 to 1869, when he removed to Bloomington . He was a Democratic representative in Congress from Illinois in 1875—1877 and again in 1879-1881; was first assistant postmaster-general in 1885-1889, and was severely criticized for his wholesale removal of Republican postmasters . He was a delegate to the national Democratic conventions in 1884 and 1892, and in the latter year was elected vice-president of the United States on the ticket with Cleveland, serving from 1893 to 1897 . In 1897 he was a member of the commission (Senator Edward O . Wolcott and General Charles J . Paine being the other members) appointed by President McKinley to confer with the governments of Great Britain, France and Germany with a view to the establishment of international bimetallism . He ' In accordance with his own wish he was buried in a small grave-yard rather than in one of the regular city cemeteries, and on his tombstone is the following epitaph written by himself: " I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude, but, finding other cemeteries limited as to race by charter rules, I have chosen this, that I might illustrate in my death the principles I advocated through a long life—Equality of man before his Creator." He bequeathed a part of his estate to found a home for white and negro orphans—the present Thaddeus Stevens industrial school—at Lancaster.was defeated . He published Something of Men I have Known; With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical and Retrospective (1909) .