Adlai Ewing Stevenson (October 23, 1835 – June 14, 1914) was an American politician who served as the 23rd vice president of the United States from 1893 to 1897.
He previously served as a representative from Illinois from 1875 to 1877 and from 1879 to 1881. After his subsequent appointment as assistant postmaster general of the United States during Grover Cleveland's first administration (1885–1889), 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 Cleveland's running mate in 1892, and he duly became 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 the Senate in a dignified, non-partisan manner.
In 1900, he ran for vice president again, this time with William Jennings Bryan. In doing so, he became the fourth vice president or former vice president to run for that office who teamed with two different presidential candidates (after George Clinton, John C. Calhoun and Thomas A. Hendricks). Stevenson was the grandfather of Adlai Stevenson II, a governor of Illinois and the unsuccessful Democratic presidential nominee in both 1952 and 1956.
