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Dean Gooderham Acheson

Also Known As Dean Acheson , Acheson

Former United States Secretary of State

Education

  • Harvard Law School, Acheson -
  • Graduated - Groton School
  • Graduated - Yale University

Overview

Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American statesman and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman's main foreign policy advisor from 1945 to 1947, especially regarding the Cold War. Acheson helped design the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He was in private law practice from July 1947 to December 1948. After 1949 Acheson came under partisan political attack from Republicans led by Senator Joseph McCarthy over Truman's policy toward the People's Republic of China.

As a private citizen in 1968 he counseled President Lyndon B. Johnson to negotiate for peace with North Vietnam. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, President John F. Kennedy called upon Acheson for advice, bringing him into the executive committee (ExComm), a strategic advisory group.

Career :

A new tradition of bright law students clerking for the U.S. Supreme Court had been begun by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. Acheson clerked for him for two terms from 1919 to 1921. Frankfurter and Brandeis were close associates, and future Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter suggested that Brandeis take on Acheson.

Throughout his long career, Acheson displayed:

exceptional intellectual power and purpose, and tough inner fiber. He projected the long lines and aristocratic bearing of the thoroughbred horse, a self-assured grace, an acerbic elegance of mind, and a charm whose chief attraction was perhaps its penetrating candor....[He] was swift-flowing and direct.... Acheson was perceived as an 18th century rationalist ready to apply an irreverent wit to matters public and private.

Early Life

Dean Gooderham Acheson was born April 11, 1893 in Middletown, Connecticut, on April 11, 1893. His father, Edward Campion Acheson, was an English-born Canadian (immigrated to Canada in 1881) who became a Church of England priest after graduating from Wycliffe College. He moved to the U.S., eventually becoming Bishop of Connecticut. His mother, Eleanor Gertrude (Gooderham), was a Canadian-born descendant of William Gooderham, Sr. (1790–1881), a founder of the Gooderham and Worts Distillery of Toronto. Like his father, Acheson was a staunch Democrat and opponent of prohibition.

Acheson attended Groton School and Yale College (1912–1915), where he joined Scroll and Key Society, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and was a brother of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Phi chapter). At Groton and Yale he had the reputation of a partier and prankster; he was somewhat aloof but still popular with his classmates. Acheson's well-known, reputed arrogance—he disdained the curriculum at Yale because it focused on memorizing subjects already known—was apparent early. At Harvard Law School from 1915 to 1918, however, he was swept away by the intellect of professor Felix Frankfurter and finished fifth in his class.

Career

  • United States - Former Secretary of State

Reference

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