The Acheson House in Middletown, Connecticut
(photo: The Middletown Eye) |
Youth1893-1912
Dean Acheson was born on April 11, 1893, in Middletown, Connecticut to a Canadian mother and Scottish-Irish father. American history professor Robert L. Beisner wrote that both his mother and father became the models of “tolerance, good works, and democratic sentiment” to him. (1)
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College Years1912-1918
Acheson attended Yale University in 1912 and was an average student who liked to spend time partying and making new friends. At Yale, he did not find interests in studying things he called “meaningless” and “not worth continuing” to learn. (2) In 1915, he moved to Harvard Law school where he met professor Felix Frankfurter who charmed Acheson with the beauty of law and became his life-long supporter, and he graduated fifth in his class in 1918. In 1917, he married Alice Stanley who was a roommate of Acheson's younger sister Margot.
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Felix Frankfurter (left) and Dean Acheson (right)
(photo: New York Times Syndicate) |
Dean Acheson (photo: aka- images -)
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Career in D.C.1918-1933
When Acheson returned to Harvard for graduate school after he served the country in the navy during the first world war, professor Frankfurter offered him a clerk position to the newly nominated Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. He moved to Washington in 1919 with his wife and started to work for Justice Brandeis. In Washington, achieving a reputation as “an international lawyer with a dazzling wit and a budding future,” Acheson had many opportunities to build relationships with people in the legal profession like Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (3) He never considered running for public office, but he had a chance to involve in politics. In 1932, Acheson participated in the Democratic Convention, barnstormed for presidential election candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), and contributed to the Democratic party's winning in the election of 1932.
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Undersecretary
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Assistant Secretary of State1941-1947
Acheson’s ties to the Department of State started in 1941 as he seized a chance to work as a new assistant secretary of state in reelected FDR's administration. When he took office, the war was fiercely going on in Europe, yet America stayed out of it. Acheson argued that the United States should actively involve in WWII. Acheson was also a leading figure in the formulation of international agencies for the new world order after the war such as the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank).
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Assistant Secretary Dean Acheson
(photo: The Digital Collection of the National WWII Museum) |
President Harry S. Truman (left) and Secretary Dean Acheson (right)
(photo: Erenow) Prime Minister Winston Churchill (second to the left)
shaking hands with Secretary Dean Acheson (second to the right) (photo: Wikimedia Commons) |
Secretary of State1949-1953
The greatest challenge in his lifetime was awaiting Acheson when he was appointed as the Secretary of State in 1949. Restoring stability and order in Europe and deterring the spread of communism in the east-west confrontation were two key agendas, out of many, during his tenure. the idea of finding “security through unification” evolved into the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). (4) As an American representative, he drafted the North Atlantic Treaty with other European delegators and signed it on April 4, 1949. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, The State department urgently considered all possible means including calling for the UN Security Council to stop the North Korean aggression. Acheson kept President Truman well informed and advised during the wartime and successfully drew international cooperation against the Communist violation of peace and the UN charter. In the last phase of the war, he also argued for voluntary repatriation to break the deadlock of the armistice over the captive repatriation issue.
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The gravesite of Dean Acheson (photo: Wikiwand)
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Last years1953-1971
Acheson retired from public office on January 20, 1953, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Johnson in 1964 for his service in government. Although he retired, he actively expressed his opinions on various foreign issues during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon years. He wrote his memoir Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department in 1969 and won the Pulitzer prize in 1970. On October 12, 1971, the prominent U.S. foreign policymaker died of a stroke in his farmhouse in Maryland.
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Footnotes
(1) Robert L. Beisner, Dean Acheson a life in the Cold War, (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 8. [EBSCOhist Academic eBook Collection]
(2) Beisner, 9.
(3) Beisner, 11.
(4) George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776, (Oxford University Press, 2008), 625.
(1) Robert L. Beisner, Dean Acheson a life in the Cold War, (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 8. [EBSCOhist Academic eBook Collection]
(2) Beisner, 9.
(3) Beisner, 11.
(4) George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776, (Oxford University Press, 2008), 625.