Adlai Stevenson II in the context of "United States Department of State"

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 4, 1952. The Republican ticket of general Dwight D. Eisenhower and senator Richard Nixon defeated the Democratic ticket of Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II and senator John Sparkman in a landslide victory, becoming the first Republican president in 20 years. This was the first election since 1928 without an incumbent president on the ballot.

Stevenson emerged victorious on the third presidential ballot of the 1952 Democratic National Convention by defeating Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, Georgia Senator Richard Russell Jr., and other candidates. The Republican nomination was primarily contested by Eisenhower, a general, widely popular for his leadership in World War II, and the conservative Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft. With the support of Thomas E. Dewey and other party leaders, Eisenhower narrowly prevailed over Taft at the 1952 Republican National Convention. He selected youthful California Senator Richard Nixon as his running mate. In the first televised presidential campaign, Eisenhower was charismatic and very well known, in sharp contrast to Stevenson.

John Jackson Sparkman (December 20, 1899 – November 16, 1985) was an American jurist and politician from the state of Alabama. A Southern Democrat, Sparkman served in the United States House of Representatives from 1937 to 1946 and the United States Senate from 1946 until 1979. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for vice president in the 1952 presidential election.

Born in Morgan County, Alabama, Sparkman established a legal practice in Huntsville, Alabama, after graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law. He won election to the House in 1936 and served as house majority whip in 1946. He left the House in 1946 after winning a special election to succeed Senator John H. Bankhead II. While in the Senate, he helped establish Marshall Space Flight Center and served as the chairman of several committees. Sparkman served as Adlai Stevenson's running mate in the 1952 presidential election, but they were defeated by the Republican ticket of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

The 1952 Democratic National Convention was held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois from July 21 to July 26, 1952, which was the same arena the Republicans had gathered in a few weeks earlier for their national convention from July 7 to July 11, 1952. Four major candidates sought the presidential nomination: U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Governor Adlai Stevenson II of Illinois, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia and Averell Harriman of New York.

Carey Estes Kefauver (/ˈɛstɪs ˈkiːfɔːvər/;July 26, 1903 – August 10, 1963) was an American politician from Tennessee. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1939 to 1949 and in the U.S. Senate from 1949 until his death in 1963. He was the winner of most of the 1952 Democratic Party presidential primaries, though he was not nominated at the convention.

After leading a much-publicized investigation into organized crime in the early 1950s, he twice sought his party's nomination for President of the United States. In 1956, he was selected at the Democratic National Convention to be the running mate of presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson. He continued to hold his U.S. Senate seat after the Stevenson–Kefauver ticket lost to the Eisenhower–Nixon ticket. Kefauver was named chair of the U.S. Senate Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1957 and served as its chairman until his death.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 6, 1956. Incumbent Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his running mate, incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, were reelected, defeating Democrat Adlai Stevenson II, former Illinois governor and Senator Estes Kefauver, in a rematch of 1952.

Eisenhower, who first became famous for his military leadership in World War II, remained widely popular. A heart attack in 1955 provoked speculation that he would not seek a second term, but his health recovered and he faced no opposition at the 1956 Republican National Convention. Stevenson remained popular with a core of liberal Democrats, but held no office and had no real base. He defeated New York Governor W. Averell Harriman and several other candidates on the first presidential ballot of the 1956 Democratic National Convention. Stevenson called for a significant increase in government spending on social programs and a decrease in military spending.

Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. (/ˈʃlɛsɪndʒər/ SHLESS-in-jər; born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a specialist in American history, much of Schlesinger's work explored the history of 20th-century American liberalism. In particular, his work focused on leaders such as Harry S. Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. In the 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns, he was a primary speechwriter and adviser to the Democratic presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson II. Schlesinger served as special assistant and "court historian" to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy administration, from the 1960 presidential campaign to the president's state funeral, titled A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, which won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.

In 1968, Schlesinger actively supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, which ended with Kennedy's assassination in Los Angeles. Schlesinger wrote a popular biography, Robert Kennedy and His Times, several years later. He later popularized the term "imperial presidency" during the Nixon administration in his 1973 book, The Imperial Presidency.

Interstate 55 (I-55) is a major north–south Interstate Highway in the US state of Illinois that connects St. Louis, Missouri, to the Chicago metropolitan area. It enters the state from Missouri near East St. Louis, Illinois, and runs to U.S. Route 41 (US 41, Lake Shore Drive) near Downtown Chicago, where the highway ends, a distance of 294.38 miles (473.76 km). The road also runs through the Illinois cities of Springfield, Bloomington, and Joliet. The section in Cook County is officially named the Stevenson Expressway for the governor, and in DuPage County it's officially named the Joliet Freeway or the Will Rogers Freeway for the humorist. The section from the south suburbs to the area near Pontiac is officially named the Barack Obama Presidential Expressway after the president, who launched his political career from Illinois.

Dwight D. Eisenhower's tenure as the 34th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1953, and ended on January 20, 1961. Eisenhower, a Republican from Kansas, took office following his landslide victory over Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 presidential election. Four years later, in the 1956 presidential election, he defeated Stevenson again, to win re-election in a larger landslide. Eisenhower was constitutionally limited to two terms (the first re-elected President to be so) and was succeeded by Democrat John F. Kennedy, who won the 1960 presidential election.

Eisenhower held office during the Cold War, a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. Eisenhower's New Look policy stressed the importance of nuclear weapons as a deterrent to military threats, and the United States built up a stockpile of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons delivery systems during Eisenhower's presidency. Soon after taking office, Eisenhower negotiated an end to the Korean War, resulting in the partition of Korea. Following the Suez Crisis, Eisenhower promulgated the Eisenhower Doctrine, strengthening U.S. commitments in the Middle East. In response to the Cuban Revolution, the Eisenhower administration broke ties with Cuba and began preparations for an invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles, eventually resulting in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. Eisenhower also allowed the Central Intelligence Agency to engage in covert actions, such as the 1953 Iranian coup d'état and the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état.

Eugene Joseph McCarthy (March 31, 1916 – December 10, 2005) was an American politician, writer, and academic who represented Minnesota in both houses of the United States Congress for over 22 years, first in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959, then in the U.S. Senate from 1959 until his resignation in 1971. A member of the Democratic Party, McCarthy sought the party's presidential nomination in the 1968 presidential election, challenging incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson on an anti–Vietnam War platform, and ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for president four more times.

Born in Watkins, Minnesota, McCarthy became an economics professor after earning a graduate degree from the University of Minnesota. He served as a code breaker for the United States Department of War during World War II. McCarthy became a member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (the state affiliate of the Democratic Party) and in 1948 was elected to the House of Representatives, where he served until being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1958. McCarthy was a prominent supporter of Adlai Stevenson II for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, and was himself a candidate for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination in 1964. He co-sponsored the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, though he later expressed regret about its impact and became a member of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.