[28] In July 1933, Stevenson took a job opportunity as special attorney and assistant to Jerome Frank, the general counsel of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

[29] As chairman, Stevenson worked to raise public support for military and economic aid to the United Kingdom and its allies in fighting Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

[30] His efforts earned strong criticism from Colonel Robert R. McCormick, the powerful, isolationist publisher of the Chicago Tribune, and a leading member of the non-interventionist America First Committee.

[31] In 1940, Major Frank Knox, newly appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as Secretary of the Navy, offered Stevenson a position as Principal Attorney and special assistant.

[37] He sought, with mixed success, to cleanse the Illinois state government of corruption; in one instance he fired the warden of the state penitentiary for overcrowding, political corruption, and incompetence that had left the prisoners on the verge of revolt, and in another instance Stevenson fired the superintendent of an institution for alcoholics when he learned that the superintendent, after receiving bribes from local tavern owners, was allowing the patients to buy drinks at local bars.

Stevenson's governorship coincided with the Second Red Scare, and during his term, the Illinois state legislature passed a bill that would have "made it a felony to belong to any subversive group", and would have required "a loyalty oath of public employees and candidates for office."

[43]On June 2, 1949, Stevenson privately gave a sworn deposition as a character witness for Alger Hiss, a former State Department official who was later found to be a spy for the Soviet Union.

[44] Stevenson's deposition, according to his biographer Porter McKeever, would later be used in the 1952 presidential campaign by Senators Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon to "inflame public opinion and attack Adlai as 'soft on communism'.

Senator Richard Russell Jr. of Georgia was popular in the South and his campaign easily won the Florida primary, but his support for racial segregation and opposition to civil rights for blacks made him unacceptable to Northern and Western Democrats.

Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions.Although Stevenson's eloquent oratory and thoughtful, stylish demeanor impressed many intellectuals, journalists, political commentators, and members of the nation's academic community, the Republicans and some working-class Democrats ridiculed what they perceived as his indecisive, aristocratic air.

In his campaign speeches Stevenson strongly criticized the Communist-hunting tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy, labeling "McCarthy's kind of patriotism" as "a disgrace" and ridiculing right-wing Republicans "who hunt Communists in the Bureau of Wildlife and Fisheries while hesitating to aid the gallant men and women who are resisting the real thing in the front lines of Europe and Asia...they are finally the men who seemingly believe that we can confound the Kremlin by frightening ourselves to death.

Historian Richard Aldous wrote "Occasionally persuasive, [Stevenson] was rarely compelling and, unlike Eisenhower, he lacked any kind of rapport or common touch with large crowds.

His approach to voters as rational participants in a process that depended on weighing the issues attracted reformers, intellectuals, and middle-class women with time and money (the "Shakespeare vote", joked one columnist).

[75] At the 1956 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, former President Truman endorsed Governor Harriman, to Stevenson's dismay, but the blow was softened by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt's continued enthusiastic support.

[84] Despite strong criticism from President Eisenhower and other leading Republicans, such as Vice President Nixon and former New York Governor Thomas Dewey, that his proposals were naïve and would benefit the Soviet Union in the Cold War, Stevenson held his ground and said in various speeches that "Earth's atmosphere is contaminated from week to week by exploding hydrogen bombs...We don't want to live forever in the shadow of a radioactive mushroom cloud... [and] growing children are the principal potential sufferers" of increased strontium 90 in the atmosphere.

[87]Stevenson's views on racial progress were described after his death by his long-time companion Marietta Tree as: "He thought of all Negroes as being loveable old family retainers and not as individuals like you and me who were longing to get educated and who had aspirations and dreams just like the rest of us.

[90] At the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, Stevenson's admirers, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, Agnes Meyer, and such Hollywood celebrities as Dore Schary and Henry Fonda, vigorously promoted him for the nomination, even though he was not an announced candidate.

Assistant Secretary of State Harlan Cleveland, who attended the briefing, felt that Barnes was too evasive in his description of the operation, and that it was clear that Stevenson was not to be given the full details of the invasion plan.

On October 25, 1963, Stevenson spoke in Dallas, Texas, where he was heckled and spat upon by unruly protestors led by retired General Edwin Walker's "National Indignation Convention".

[127] After the conference he stopped in London for several days, where he visited UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson, discussed the situation in South Vietnam with British officials, and was interviewed by CBS newsman Eric Sevareid.

"[56] His biographer Jean H. Baker stated that Stevenson's memory "still survives...as an expression of a different kind of politics – nobler, more issue-oriented, less compliant to the greedy ambitions of modern politicians, and less driven by public opinion polls and the media.

[135]His biographer Jean H. Baker wrote of Stevenson's two presidential campaigns in 1952 and 1956 that "what would be remembered...were not his public programs and ideas for a New America but, ironically, the private man – his character and personality, his wit and charm, his efforts to negotiate and keep the peace within the Democratic Party, his elegant speeches, and the grace with which he accepted defeat.

"[136] The Central Illinois Regional Airport near Bloomington has a whimsical statue of Stevenson, sitting on a bench with his feet propped on his briefcase and his head in one hand, as if waiting for his flight.

In the former, a gag occurs, as the mob of Springfielders exhume the corpse of Jedediah, Willie mistakenly throws dirt over the flame of a candle vigil set in front of Adlai's grave).

He has also been referenced in The Golden Girls,[141] Happy Days (in the January 28, 1975, episode "The Not Making of the President")[142] and Mystery Science Theater 3000's presentation of Manos: The Hands of Fate (a Stevenson lookalike buys a car and one of the MST3K characters comments on it).

[144] Stevenson's "Don't wait for the translation" speech to Russian ambassador Valerian Zorin during the Cuban Missile Crisis inspired dialogue in a courtroom scene in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

[147] In a parallel universe featured in the Sliders episode "The Return of Maggie Beckett", the German Wehrmacht breaks through the Allied lines in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, which causes World War II to drag on until 1947.

The Stevenson administration makes the Roswell UFO incident in July 1947 public knowledge and signs the Reticulan-American Free Trade Agreement (RAFTA), giving the US access to advanced Reticulan technology.

The novella follows Stevenson's increasingly futile efforts to negotiate an armistice between League of Nations peacekeepers led by General Erwin Rommel and several disparate guerrilla-terrorist bands with differing agendas.

In the alternate history novel Dominion by C. J. Sansom, World War II ends in June 1940 when the British government, under the leadership of the Prime Minister Lord Halifax, signs a peace treaty with Nazi Germany in Berlin.