Historic Route 66: Bloomington, IL (Part II: David Davis Mansion)

Earlier this week, we posted about our first stop in Bloomington, IL: — the Stevenson graves.

We then headed on over to the historic David Davis Mansion (pictured, right).

As we learned in our tour of the Postville Courthouse, David Davis had served as judge on the same 8th Judicial Circuit (from 1848 to 1862) traveled by then-lawyer Abraham Lincoln. Prior to that, Davis had served as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives in 1845 and a delegate to the Illinois constitutional convention in McLean County, 1847.

Davis served as a delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago, where Lincoln received the nomination for president. Davis went on to serve as Lincoln's campaign manager in that election.

In 1862, Lincoln appointed Davis to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1972, he received the nomination of the Labor Reform Party to be president of the United States — but then dropped out of the contest when he failed to receive the Liberal Republican Party nomination. Ulysses S. Grant, of course, went on to win that election (the U.S. Grant home in Galena, IL, will certainly be a future stop documented on this blog).

In 1977, the Illinois legislature selected Davis to serve as U.S. Senator (senators were not popularly elected in most states in those days), and resigned his seat on the Supreme Court.

During his first and only term as U.S. Senator, he ascended to the President Pro Tempore position, and then retired in 1883 to his home in Bloomington. He died in 1886, and is actually buried at Evergreen Cemetery, which we visited to find the Stevenson graves earlier on our trip.

I invite you to read the full Wikipedia post on Davis' life, which details some key, historic decisions he handed down while on the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, I arrived at the Davis Mansion after it had closed to visitors for the day. I encourage you to visit the historic site's Web site to learn about the ongoing exhibits and events they feature on a regular basis.

Historic Route 66: Bloomington, IL (Part I: Evergreen Cemetery)

The next stop on my Route 66 sightseeing tour: Bloomington, IL.

I have to be honest, by the time I rolled into Bloomington, I was running way behind. There are many more great sites to visit here, and I just hit three "quickies".

First, I stopped at Evergreen Cemetery, which is "home" to the graves of Adlai Stevenson, former Congressman and Vice President under Grover Cleveland (1893-1897). His wife, Letitia Green Stevenson, is also buried at Evergreen.

His son, Adlai Stevenson II, is also buried here. The younger Stevenson served as the Governor of Illinois (1949-1953), Ambassador to the United Nations (1961-1965), and twice served as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Presidency (1952 and 1956).

In addition to his various posts in government and politics, Stevenson is also remembered for his role in helping bring an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. On October 25, 1963, he addressed a special session of the U.N. Security Council, forcefully confronting the Soviet Representative. As Wikipedia reports:

He forcefully asked the Soviet representative, Valerian Zorin, if his country was installing missiles in Cuba, punctuated with the famous demand "Don't wait for the translation, answer 'yes' or 'no'!" Following Zorin's refusal to answer the abrupt question, Stevenson retorted, "I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over." In one of the most memorable moments in U.N. history, Stevenson then showed photographs that proved the existence of missiles in Cuba, just after the Soviet ambassador had implied they did not exist.

You can click here to read the full text of Stevenson's speech to the U.N. Security Council.

Tomorrow, I'll a recap of my next Bloomington stops: the David Davis Mansion and the Beer Nuts Factory (yes, I said the Beer Nuts Factory).