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Dean Acheson 1893-1971: a Biographical Sketch

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Dean Acheson 1893-1971: A Biographical Sketch Born Dean Gooderham Acheson on 11 April 1893, in Middletown, Connecticut, the son of Edward Campion Acheson, an Episcopal bishop, and Eleanor Gertrude Gooderham Acheson; 1915 graduates from Yale University with 'gendeman C' s', having first attended the Groton School; 1917 marries Alice Stanley, with whom he will have three children; 1918-20 graduates from Harvard Law School; serves as law clerk to Supreme CourtJustice Louis D. Brandeis; 1921joins law firm of Covington and Burling, with which he will be affiliated for the rest of his life; 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appoints him Under Secretary of the Treasury at the recommendation of Felix Frankfurter; resigns six months later in protest against the reduction of the gold content of the dollar; 1936joins the Yale Corporation, on which he serves until 1961; 1941 appointed Assistant Secretary of State, and serves under Cordell Hull and Edward Stettinius; 1941-4 helps coordinate the lend-lease pro­ gram during World War II; 1941-53 at State Department, he is responsible for the Bretton Woods agreement leading to the establishment of the World Bank, assistance to Greece and Turkey under the Truman Doctrine, groundwork for the Marshall Plan, development of American atomic policy, forma­ tion of NATO, peace treaty with Japan, diplomacy over the Korean conflict, US policy toward the People's Republic of China, creation and rearmament of West Germany, and the era of bipartisanship in foreign policy; 1945-7 appointed Under Secretary of State serving under James F. Byrnes and George C. Marshall; retires temporarily from State Department in July 1947; 1949returns to State Department as President Truman's Secretary of State; 1953 leaves office under a hail of criticism and McCarthyite accusations of being 'soft on communism'; 1953-60 returns to law and becomes outspoken critic of the Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policy; 1957-60 serves as chairman of the Foreign Policy Committee of the Democratic Advisory 256 Bibliography 257 Council; 1960-3 becomes important unofficial foreign policy advisor to President Kennedy on the Berlin and Cuban crises; 1964-8 advises President Johnson on the Vietnam War; March 1968 tells President Johnson he should pull the US out of Vietnam; 1968-71 serves as important unofficial advisor to Presi­ dent Nixon; 1970wins the Pulitzer Prize for his sixth book, the autobiographical Present at the Creation; 1971 dies on 12 October of a stroke, at his country home in Sandy Spring, Maryland. Select Bibliography OVERVIEW OF BIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES There is no comprehensive biography of Dean Acheson, partly because Acheson himself wrote with such authoritative ability and literary flair, most notably demonstrated in his Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of his years in the State Department, Present at the Creation (1969). To date, five published bio­ graphical profiles exist, and one of these, Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas's The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986), portrays Acheson along with five others (Chip Bohlen, Averell Harriman, George Kennan, Robert Lovett, and John J. McCloy) as a premier architect of US postwar foreign policy. Gaddis Smith's Dean Acheson (1972) is a volume in the Ameri­ can Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy series, and therefore focuses primarily on his foreign policy achievements and blunders while he held that office from 1949 to 1953. Douglas Brinkley's Dean Acheson: The Cold War Year.s 1953-1971 (1992) examines his career after he left government and became an advisor to three presidents. Ronald Stupak's The Shaping of Foreign Policy: The Role ofthe Secretary ofState as Seen by Dean Acheson ( 1969) analyzes Acheson's perspectives on the proper role of the Secretary of State in Anerican government. DavidS. McLellan's Dean Acheson: The State Department Year.s (1976) is the nearest thing to a full-scale biography, although the book gives short shrift to the last seventeen years of Acheson's life. McLellan concentrates mainly on the political as contrasted with the economic and elitist interpretations of Acheson's foreign policy. Forrest Pogue's masterful George C. Mar.shaU: States­ man 1945-1959 (1987); Robert Donavan's Tumultuous Year.s: The Presidency of Harry S Truman, 1949-1953 (1982); and Melvyn P. Leffler's A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War ( 1992) offer important historical and biographical portraits of Acheson in government. OVERVIEW AND EVALUATION OF PRIMARY SOURCES Dean Acheson was the author of six books, plus three volumes of collected articles and speeches edited posthumously. The first of these, A Democrat Looks at His Party (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955), is a polemic presenting the virtues of the party from 1933 to 1953, in which he also touches briskly upon such topics as pollsters, intellectuals in government, demagogues, the New Deal, war, and life itself. There soon followed an updated reassessment of Woodrow Wilson's famous book, Congressional Government (1885), entitled A Citizen Looks at Congress (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956), a penetra­ ting analysis of Congress, its relation to the Chief Executive, and the role of 258 Select Bibliography 259 the committee system in the House and Senate. The William L. Clayton Lectures that Acheson delivered at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, later published under the title of Power and Diplomacy (Cam­ bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), deal with NATO's military requirements and political precepts for coalitions of free states. Sketches from Life of Men I Have Known (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1961), contains wonderful personal vignettes of Acheson's close association with world leaders including Adenauer, Churchill, Marshall, and Vandenberg. Acheson's next book, Morning and Noon (Boston: Houghton Mifllin, 1965), is a charm­ ing and nostalgic autobiographical account of his childhood in Middletown, Connecticut, his time spent at Yale and Harvard, his years as law clerk to Justice Brandeis, and his service in the Roosevelt administration. Present at the Creation (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), is the brilliant Pulitzer Prize­ winning account of his years in the State Department (1945-53), when he was a key architect and manager of American foreign policy during the presi­ dency of Harry S. Truman. Fragments of My Fleece (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), Grapes from Thorns (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), and This Vast External Realm (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), are collections of posthu­ mously published essays covering a wide range of topics related to law, gov­ ernment, politics, and foreign-policy decision making. The central public papers of Dean Acheson as Secretary of State can be found in The Pattern of Responsibility: From the Record of Dean Acheson, edited by McGeorge Bundy (Boston: Houghton Mifllin, 1952). Among Friends: Personal Letters of Dean Acheson, edited by David S. McLellan and David C. Acheson (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1980), is a wonderful selection of witty and informal personal letters written to friends, associates, and family. In addition to his own published writings, the collected primary material is rich. The Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University is the repository of his personal papers including all his post-secretarial papers from 1953-71. Acheson's own records and correspondence from his tours of public service are located at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. His oral history pertaining to his role as foreign policy advisor to President Kennedy can be found at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. The Dean Acheson oral history seminars on his State Department years, including accounts given by Averell Harriman and Paul Nitze at the Institute for Ad­ vanced Study, Princeton, 1952-3, are available on microfilm at the Truman Library. The Department of State Bulletin (1941-53) and the Foreign Relations of the United States (1945-53) are helpful government sources. SELECTED SPEECHES AND ARTICLES BY DEAN ACHESON 1936-1971 (The following can be found in the Dean Acheson Personal Papers at the Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.) 'Roger Brooke Taney: Notes Upon Judicial Restraint', Maryland Bar Associa­ tion, 4 July 1936. 'Some Social Factors in Legal Change', Law Club of Chicago, 22 January 1937. 260 Select Bibliography Harvard Law Review Banquet (50th Anniversary) 17 April1937. 'Mr Justice Cardozo and Problems of Government', Bar and Officers of the US Supreme Court, 26 November 1938. 'An American Attitude Toward Foreign Affairs', Yale University, Davenport College, 28 November 1939. 'International Ladies Garment Workers Union', New York City, 4 June 1940. Letter to New Yorlc Times regarding transfer of US destroyers to England, 11 August 1940. 'Shall We Give Further Aid to Great Britain?', American Forum of the Air, 13 October 1940. 'Is a Hitler defeat essential to the United States?', Town Meeting, 13 January 1941. Brandeis, Louis, remarks at funeral service for, 10 October 1941. Lend-Lease Act reviewed, statement before US House Foreign Affairs Com­ mittee, February 1943. National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, 14 November 1945. 'Mutual Advantages of the British Loan', Economic Club of Detroit, 18 March 1946. 'International Control of Atomic Energy', CBS broadcast, 23 April1946. 'Random Harvest' speech, Associated Harvard Clubs, 4June 1946. Bryn Mawr College address, 11 June 1946. American Society of Newspaper Editors, 18 April1947. Delta Council, Cleveland, Mississippi, 8 May 1947. Wesleyan University (Conn.), 15June 1947. Wellesley College (Mass.), 1 October 1947. 'What Should We Do for Europe Now?', Town Meeting, 14 October 1947. Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, 28 November 1947. 'The US in World Affairs, 1947-48', foreword to book published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Harper's. Marshall Plan statement before US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 28 January 1948. 'Diplomatic and International Significance of the European Recovery Program', Philadelphia Bulletin Forum, 10 March 1948.
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