A Good Loser

Melodrama and misadventure characterized the last week of Adlai Stevenson's campaign. Five days before the election, while whistle-stopping through the East, he got word that a riot among the convicts at Illinois' Menard state penitentiary was still out of hand. Interrupting his campaign, Stevenson flew off to the prison to watch, pale and tired, as armed state troopers routed out 300 rebellious prisoners who had barricaded themselves in a cell block. Governor Stevenson, who got to the scene in time to go over the plan of action with Lieutenant Governor Sherwood Dixon and other state officials, was off again within a few hours to resume the campaign.

In his last fireside chat the night before election, the Democratic candidate flashed on the nation's TV screens accompanied by sons Borden & John Fell. Wearily he told his audience that the 14 weeks since his nomination had been "a long, long time." He went on: "Looking back, I am content. Win or lose, I have told you the truth as I see it ... I have not done as well as I should like to have done, but I have done my best . . ." When his TV time ran out, the governor still had several crucial sentences of his speech left to go. These he delivered in an anticlimactic five-minute broadcast an. hour later.

Election night Stevenson settled down to listen to the increasingly disheartening returns on a portable radio in a ground-floor office of the Illinois governor's mansion at Springfield. At 12:40 in the morning, when Democratic hopes were clearly dead, he drove over to his election-eve campaign headquarters in Springfield's Leland Hotel. Smiling as the Democratic crowd loyally chanted "We want Stevenson," the governor, in a generous and graceful speech, conceded the election to Dwight Eisenhower. Said he: "The people have rendered their verdict, and I gladly accept it. General Eisenhower has been a great leader in war. He has been a vigorous and valiant opponent in the campaign. These qualities will now be dedicated to leading us all through the next four years ... I urge you all to give General Eisenhower the support he will need to carry out the great tasks that lie before him. I pledge him mine."

In the course of his campaign, Adlai Stevenson had become famous for his anecdotes. None he had ever told was more fitting than the one which he added to his formal concession statement. Someone, he said, had once asked Lincoln how he felt after losing a political campaign. Said Stevenson: "He said he felt like a little boy who stubbed his toe in the dark. He was too old to cry, and it hurt too much to laugh."

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