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<text> <title> (52 Elect) The Will of the People </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1952 Election </history> <link 12026> <link 12027> <link 15986> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> November 10, 1952 THE NATION The Will of the People </hdr> <body> Dwight Eisenhower won the presidency of the U.S. in a ballot-box revolution. The size of the vote was impressive in itself 55% of the popular vote, 38 states (with Kentucky, Missouri and Louisiana still in doubt 18 hours after the count began) and at least 429 of the 531 electoral votes. More impressive than the number of votes was the revolutionary quality that appeared when the details of the balloting were set side-by-side with the issues of the campaign and the state of the nation in which the campaign was waged. In a time of unprecedented prosperity, with 62.5 million men & women at work, the voters repudiated the party in power- repudiated an administration which held the awesome political leverage of a $80 billion-a-year budget. The Democrats frankly fought the campaign on the pocketbook issue: "Don't let them take it away." To the last, in spite of all that Ike and his friends could say, an overwhelming majority of Americans believed that the Democratic Party "was better for them personally" in an economic sense than the Republican Party. The people did what materialists and cynics say people never do: voted against what they believed to be their immediate economic interests. Certainly, Ike made vast headway in his sincere (and highly feasible) promises to maintain and extend the New Deal's gains and to revive faith in progress through free enterprise. But he did not win the campaign on economic issues. It was tought and won on transcendent issues of morality: 1) clean government, 2) government for all the people and not for special groups, and 3) government that would express in foreign and domestic policy the moral beliefs that lie at the root of U.S. life and greatness. Under the last heading comes the question of softness to Communism, of which the confused deadlock of the Korean war was the most persuasive symptom and the Alger Hiss case was the most clinically revealing symptom. Issues of this kind touched Americans of all classes-and the vote on tuesday reflected the judgment of all classes. He did not win by breaking away one or two groups from the amazing coalition built by Franklin Roosevelt. He won by gaining appreciable numbers of Democrats in almost every group. Among them: 1) Farmers, who had never had it so good, shifted to Ike by the hundreds of thousands on Korea nd kindred issues. 2) Big-city industrial workers, wooed for 20 years by the Democrats, turned by the millions to the Republican candidate. 3) Roman Catholics, long a mainstay of the Democratic Party, moved away from a party that did not seem to understand the moral danger of Communism. 4) Southerners, weary and appalled at the growing bureaucracy of Washington, left the party of their fathers. 5) Young men shifted, partly because they thought it time for a change. 6) Women, reacting against the Korean deadlock, swarmed to Ike. Never has a people looked so critically at a superficially successful present and voted so overwhelmingly for a more solidly based future. The man who led this peaceful overturn was a newcomer to politics. He was adopted by the liberal wing of the Republican Party which believed that the tangible gains of the New Deal's philosophy. Ike thought at first he would be "drafted" by the Republicans, but he quickly found that the processes of democracy include hard and necessary tests. He passed those in the dramatic weeks when the magic number was 604-the majority of Republican Convention delegates. He unified his bitterly divided party, defined his "crusade," and set out to pass the next test, in which the goal was 266 electoral votes. His campaign survived the Nixon crisis- stirred up partly out of hatred for the man who broke the Alger Hiss case-and turned an apparent setback into an advantage. It survived the egghead rebellion, the desertion of Ike by scores of intellectuals, journalists, Hollywoodians and other opinion makers. The final victory discloses an alarming fact,long suspected: there is a wide and unhealthy gap between the American intellectuals and the people. (Stevenson made a poor showing in New York City, the font and center of eggheadery.) The Task Ahead. Intellectuals aside, the vote for Eisenhower suggests that, despite the relative bitterness of campaign oratory, the U.S. is more genuinely united behind the President- elect than it has been for many years. Few Presidents in U.S. history have had so clear a mandate from so many divergent groups. It is, in fact, a mandate for a fresh start in the U.S.'s dealings with the world and with itself-a mandate for leadership. At no time in U.S. history has the need for leadership been so great or the leader's task so complex and fateful. In 1952, the U.S.'s (and therefore the President's) responsibility reaches into the farthest corners of the earth. It faces the greatest threat to free societies in a thousand years. It must deal not only with governments, with armies, with billions of money, with staggering weapons of destruction on the brink of war; it must deal with the souls of men-must, in Eisenhower's words, "persuade the world by peaceful means to believe the truth." That is the measure of the job which a majority of the American people has entrusted to Dwight Eisenhower. Election Day The seven voters of Millsfield, N.H. (pop. 16) stayed up late on election eve and marked their ballots just as soon as the clock struck midnight. Everybody had gathered in the parlor of Mrs. Genevieve N. Annis' 125-year-old house well ahead of time, and the votes were cast, in the light of kerosene lamps, amid a fine, conspiratorial atmosphere. Mrs. Annis, the town clerk, collected and counted them quickly, recorded one absentee ballot, and, at 12:02 o'clock, proudly reported the nation's first election returns (eight votes for Eisenhower). The rest of the U.S., too, could hardly wait to vote; an astonishing number of people got to their polling places before dawn, and by breakfast time big lines had formed outside flag- hung schools, garages, country stores and basement voting places. All day long the great outpouring of voters went steadily on. The U.S. public had seldom been so enthusiastically belabored by the public-spirited and the civil-minded. Except in Minnesota, which bars transportation of voters as a corrupt practice, there was hardly a city in which a voter could not get a lift to the polls just by picking up his telephone. In some towns he could get a free taxi ride, and in Rochester, N.Y. an ambulance was his for the asking, even if he wasn't sick. Orange, City, Iowa blew its fire siren every hour on the hour to remind the apathetic that it was Election Day. From new york to San Diego volunteer baby-sitters offered their services to voting mothers. Thousands in St. Louis turned on their porch lights as dusk fell to remind the laggards of their duty. The vast majority of citizens, however, came to the polls with the air of people who needed no urging or reminding. The weather was fine almost everywhere, but most of the electorate acted as though it would have braved the rain, snow or a plague of grasshoppers. Mrs. Virginia Borrison of Tarentum, Pa, went to the polls six hours after giving birth to a baby; an unidentified woman in Miami was informed that her "I Like Ike" skirt constituted electioneering, took it off, stood calmly by in her slip until it was her turn to vote. It was an astonishingly quiet Election Day. A few election officials unscrewed the backs of voting machines "for mechanical reasons" and sneaked a look at the vote. There was a little minor scuffling; in Albany, N.Y., a Republican committeeman punched a democratic poll watcher in the nose. In Seattle an old man who had waited in line for three hours was told that he had forgotten to register. He began to weep. "This," he sobbed, "is my last time." The crowd yelled: "Let him vote." He registered forthwith, voted and said happily: "I thank you all." But the big phenomena of the day were the long lines of intent and patient people who shuffled slowly outside almost every polling place. In 1952 the U.S. people urgently wanted to vote. In the secrecy of the voting booth, they had their say. Election Night For weeks the speculation and suspense mounted and the questions multiplied. The answers went into the ballot box on election Day. In a few hours they began to pour out. Here, measured in Eastern Standard Time, is how the ballot boxes told one of the greatest stories of this generation: 8 to 9 O'Clock. Three big campaign questions got early tentative answers: 1) How solid is the South? Virginia, whose Democratic Boss Harry Byrd had refused to work for Stevenson, gave Eisenhower an 8:30 lead of 48,000 to 34,000; Richmond, expected to go Republican, gave Eisenhower a big lead (21,866 to 14,314). In florida, Ike not only led in the big resort cities (full of transplanted yankees) but ran only slightly behind Stevenson in industrial and thoroughly Democratic Duval County (Jacksonville). 2) Will soldiers and veterans vote for a general? A fast count of the soldier vote in areas of New Jersey showed Eisenhower leading 2-1. 3) Will the minority vote swing away from the Democrats? One predominantly Jewish precinct in Philadelphia gave Stevenson a heavier lead than it gave Truman in 1948. Even the expected was coming unexpectedly fast. The Hartford Courant declared at 7: 40 p.m. that Ike had swept Connecticut. Eisenhower carried Bridgeport (pop. 159,000) by three votes-the first time since 1924 that a Republican candidate had carried this industrial city. At 8 o'clock. Republican National Chairman arthur Summerfield looked at the results, said it might be a landslide for Ike. Less than 5% of the total vote was in by then, but almost every indicator was beginning to point Ike's way. 9 to 10. The Republican landslide in Connecticut and Ike's breakthrough in the South were confirmed. By the time a third of Connecticut's votes were in, Ike had jumped into a lead of 240,000 to 217,000; at the two-thirds mark Ike was piling up a 57% majority (v. Tom Dewey's bare 50% in 1948). From there on, the Republican Connecticut sweep was swift and devastating. At 9:30, Democratic Senator Bill Benton conceded the victory of Republican William Purtell and gloomily predicted a nationwide victory for Ike. Minutes later, Democrat A.A. Ribicoff conceded to Republican Prescott bush in connecticut's other Senate race. In the South, Ike's breakthrough widened. With a third of Florida's votes recorded, Eisenhower was leading by 56% sweeping through the big cities, rolling up the Gold Coast and whittling the normal Democratic majority in the ham-and-hominy belt of Leon County. In Virginia, with half the votes counted, the race was already over; Ike was carrying Richmond by more than 2 to 1, carrying Roanoke and Lynchburg by 2 to 1, edging ahead even in rural Cumberland and Powhatan Counties. For the first time since 1928, Virginia was swinging Republican, 111,000 to 88,000. In Maryland, the story was the same; at the halfway mark Ike led with a 55% majority, including a lead in the Democratic stronghold of Baltimore. A few Democratic fortresses held out. Georgia gave Stevenson its twelve electoral votes. South Carolina, which gave Ike a narrow lead after 47% of the returns were in, swung back to Stevenson. At this point a cloud appeared on the Republican horizon. Philadelphia was giving Stevenson a surprising majority; with more than half the election districts recorded, Stevenson led by 86,000. Analysts had thought Ike might lose Pennsylvania if the Democratic majority in Philadelphia exceeded 100,000. The Philadelphia sweep raised the possibility that 1948 would repeat itself and the early G.O.P. lead in the nation might melt away. But elsewhere, the Republican tide was still running full. In New Jersey, at the 10% mark, Ike led by 189,000 to 112,000. In New York, the first complete town to report was Rome. The vote: Eisenhower, 10,000 to 7,600. (In 1948, Truman had carried Rome, 6,898 to 6,197.) In Ohio, cleveland was running 2 to 1 for Ike; in Massachusetts, the Boston Post called it an Ike victory at 9: 45. In Indiana, Ike got off to an early lead: 88,000 to 66,000. 10 to 11. The Univac is an electronic brain which the Columbia Broadcasting System hired to proved cold and early mathematical calculation of election trends. But Univac turned out to be as cautious as a pollster in the hands of cautious masters. At 10 o'clock, an assistant to Adlai stevenson stated in Springfield, Ill.: "The news is not good and it looks pretty grim." But it was nearly 10:30 before Univac found the same kind of perspicacity, calculated that Ike would win by 314 electoral votes to Stevenson's 217 (or 27 million popular votes to Stevenson's 24 million). (Univac's first prediction, on the basis of only 3,000,000 votes, gave Ike 438 electoral votes, Stevenson 93. CBS flatly refused to believe it, cut out part of Univac's "memory," so it wouldn't be so smart. said a CBS announcer ruefully: "It was right; we were wrong.") G.O.P. Chairman Summerfield was far more positive. Said he, at 10)45: "Dwight Eisenhower has been elected President of the U.S." Had he? Not yet certainly, but the Eisenhower tide was now rolling West. Ike was ahead from Ohio to Texas. In Texas, where Democratic Governor Allan Shivers had staked his political future on a switch, Ike was leading by 60%-mostly on the basis of city vote with many old-line, outlying Democrats yet to be heard from. There were three big question marks in the westward advances. The first was Illinois, governor Stevenson's home state. The governor was carrying Chicago as any good Democrat should, but his total margin in cook County looked so small that he could not possibly overbalance the strong Republican vote downstate. (Stevenson's hand-picked successor as the Democratic candidate for governor was running ahead of Stevenson who in 1948 had run nearly half a million votes ahead of Harry Truman.) In Michigan, heavily C.I.O. Detroit was running approximately 61% for Stevenson (slightly better than for Harry Truman in 1948), but upstate Republicans had yet to be heard from. Question mark No. 3 was Pennsylvania: Stevenson was still ahead in Pennsylvania, mostly on the perishable strength of Philadelphia, but Democratic counties in the western part of the state turned in Stevenson majorities lower than had been expected. Pennsylvania's Governor John Fine predicted that Pennsylvania was "absolutely Ike's." Behind Ike's westward front, the G.O.P. mopping-up was going famously in the East. New York's cherished 45 electoral votes were clearly Ike's: Stevenson's lead in New York City was far short of what he needed to balance the Republicans upstate. (Stevenson finally carried New York City by only 362,674, the smallest Democratic presidential lead since 1924.) Republican Senatorial Candidate Irving Ives was rolling up the largest plurality of any G.O.P. candidate in New york history since the big sweep of Warren G. harding. Democratic state Chairman Paul Fitzpatrick finally conceded both races. 11 to Midnight. The Republican tide rose higher in the West, washed back through the East and welled deeper into the crumbling South. By 11:20, Ike led in 34 states with 352 electoral votes, including 20 states carried by Harry Truman in 1948. The popular vote: Eisenhower 8,544,000, Stevenson 7,735,000-54% for Ike. In the Midwest, Ike swept across all the traditional political boundaries. The farmers of Ohio's Franklin township were swinging Republican by 3 to 1; a heavily labor precinct in Dayton split right down the middle; Ike 245, Stevenson 245, Ike's Ohio majority; 56%. Oklahoma was going for Ike by 52%, Kansas by 68%, Wisconsin by 60%, Wisconsin by 60% (with Senator Joe McCarthy well ahead of Democratic Candidate Thomas Fairchild but trailing both Ike and governor Walter Kohler Jr.). In Minnesota, Ike was 5,600 votes ahead in St. Paul, which gave truman a majority of 40,000 in 1948. Even Adlai Stevenson's Illinois had fallen. Ike jumped into a narrow lead, cutting sharply into Stevenson's expected majority in Chicago and rolling up so decisive a majority downstate that Democratic Boss Jake Arvey conceded before midnight. The first returns from the mountain states and the Pacific Coast were all Ike. He led by 52 1/2% in California, by 60% in utah, was running well ahead in Texas. As the final figures mounted in the East, Ike was leading by 52% in Massachusetts, took the lead for the first time in Pennsylvania. Despite stevenson's whopping majority of 162,000 in Philadelphia, Ike came back as the outstate counties reported. One example of the Eisenhower surge; the hard-coal district of Lackawanna County (Scranton), which gave Harry Truman a plurality of 18,200 gave stevenson an edge of only 3,000. The strength of the Republican tide sapped even the strongest Democratic citadels. South Carolina, after wavering for hours, finally fell to Stevenson-but only through a quirk in the balloting. Because the Eisenhower vote was divided between two separate sets of electors. Stevenson was holding a precarious plurality. In Tennessee and Kentucky, Stevenson led by a shaky 1,000 votes each out of nearly 1,000,000 cast. In Alabama, where Stevenson was running well ahead in the statewide count, Ike carried Mobile, the first Republican to do so since General Grant carried the state in 1872. In Rhode Island, solidly Democratic since 1924 Stevenson overcame an early Ike lead to edge ahead by a bare 1,000 votes. 12 to 1. In the first minutes of Wednesday, Stephen Mitchell, Adlai stevenson's hand-picked chairman of the Democratic national Committee, stood like the boy on the burning deck. The Republicans had not won, he said; final returns would show a Democratic majority in Ohio and Pennsylvania. But within the hour, the Ohio Democratic state chairman conceded Ike's victory in the state (although Ohio's popular Democrat Frank Lausche was winning the governorship). In Pennsylvania, the G.O.P. pulled steadily ahead. At 12:40, the New York Times swung its manhattan beacon northward above the neon glow of Times Square, a signal that the Times accepted the Eisenhower victory as assured. Jake Arvey, Stevenson's faithful servant and boss of Cook County, had a more practical rationalization than Steve Mitchell. Said Arvey: "It seems like reactionary democrats combined with Republicans to beat us." Overlookes fact staring Arvey in the face: all of Stevenson's electoral vote was coming from the Fari- Dealhating South (plus West Virginia). Just who really beat the Democrats? The indicators were beginning to clear. In New york, the state G.O.PL. analysts gave heavy credit to women. In New York's big minority blocs. Ike picked up great chunks of the traditionally Democratic Irish Catholic vote, nicked considerably (contrary to political guessing) into the Jewish vote, took a good share of the Italian bloc, but could not dent the loyalty of Negroes to the Democrats. General Ike did unexpectedly well with Manhattan's Puerto Ricans. In four Polish wards in Buffalo bitter memories of Yalta did their work; the Democratic majority dropped from 3 to 1 to 3 to 2 this time. In Texas, now cinching an Ike victory, Ike won many cattlemen and farmers who had voted for Truman in 1948. Hemphill County in the Panhandle, was 79.8% Democratic in 1948, but it was only 39.7% Democratic in 1948, but it was only 39.7% democratic this wee. In Southwest texas. Menard county was 67% Democratic in 1948, only 32% this time. Farmers switched in Iowa too, Ike was leading in heavily pro-labor Wapello County, in Holland-Dutch Sioux County, and in heavily Catholic Dubuque County. In Ohio, agricultural Darke County was a good sample of intense Republican enthusiasm. Darke was 413 for Eisenhower and 116 for Stevenson (1948: Dewey 289, Truman 132). In Kentucky, a solid Democratic county like Marshall-in Alben Barkley's congressional district-raised its G.O.P. vote from 19% in 1948 to 30% in 1952. Even Jake Arvey could hardly classify usually Democratic Arizona as reactionary. Yet Arizona was electing a complete set of G.O.P. officials, from President on down, for the first time in the state's history. biggest upset was the commanding lead of Barry Goldwater, Phoenix store owner and diligent Republican campaigner, over U.S. Senator Ernest McFarland, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate. There was one new source of G.O.P. strength which Jake Arvey, of all people, should have seen most clearly. A complete new crop of young Republicans, many of them ex-Democrats, has sprung-up in the nation's growing suburbs. Chicago's burgeoning suburbs were the base of unprecedented Republican strength. Much of the credit for G.O.P. suburban success could go to the irregulars of the Citizens for Eisenhower-Nixon. 1 to 2. At Stevenson headquarters in Springfield, gloomy Democrats watched the wreckage of their last tottering hopes. texas was gone, Pennsylvania was gone, Nevada was going-for the first time since 1928. So were Utah, Oregon and Wyoming. (Whose renegade Republican Senator Wayne Morse snorted at 2 a.m.: "Eisenhower and Nixon fooled the people and won the election.") In Washington, Ike was leading in every county. In Minneapolis, Ike turned the Democrats' 1948 majority of 30,000 into a growing Republican lead. In Rhode Island, the narrow Stevenson majority melted away, and there Ike won his most unexpected eastern victory. The extent of the Eisenhower sweep could be measured by a change in the election summaries. By 1:30, the easiest way to report the nationwide returns was to list the states still in the Democratic column: nine Southern states with a total of 89 electoral votes. The nationwide popular vote: Ike 17,067,000. Stevenson 14,636,000. In Springfield, Adlai Stevenson made his painful decision, conceded defeat. 2 o'clock to Signoff. California's 32 electoral votes, eyed hungrily during the campaign as the meat of the struggle, turned out to be only the frosting on the cake. Politically uninhibited Los Angeles County gave Ike 58%. San Francisco, normally disciplined and Democratic, gave Ike about 52%. Much credit for the victory went to California housewives, who voted in record numbers, much to a new budding Republican organization which got out more than 80% of the registered vote, much to the Democrats' own organizational chaos. Democratic votes did not begin to approximate Democratic hopes. Union members seemed plainly convinced that they would not be hurt by voting Republican. For example, in a highly unionized San Francisco county, Eisenhower took an early and unexpected lead, and the Democratic Congressman was defeated. So the story unfolded, from East to West, and faster than almost anybody thought it would. by 2:15 a.m., most of the story was told, the commentators could add no more, and one by one, the television stations began to sign off. The Exception Philadelphia, stubborn and alone, bucked the tide. Once the home of unreconstructed Republicanism, it became the only important area where the Democrats made big gains in 1952. harry Truman had carried it by a mere 7,000 in 1948; Adlai Stevenson swept it by 160,000. There were several reasons for this: the heavily Democratic Jewish and Negro vote held firm; there were few defections from the Irish Democratic vote. More important, Philadelphians had thrown out their corrupt and senile city- Republican machine in 1951, and for the first time, the controlled river wards were in the hands of Democrats. Two-Party The power of Eisenhower's march through the South was attested in a morning-after compilation (still incomplete) by the Associated Press: in the 13 traditionally Democratic states covered, Governor Stevenson held 4,100,000 votes, but the general captured 4,000,000. A Good Loser Melodrama and misadventure characterized the last week of Adlai Stevenson's campaign. Five days before the election, while whistle-stopping through the East, he got word that a riot among the convicts at Illinois' Menard state penitentiary was still out of hand. Interrupting his campaign, Stevenson flew off to the prison to watch, pale and tired, as armed state troopers routed out 300 rebellious prisoners who had barricaded themselves in a cell block. Governor Stevenson, who got to the scene in time to go over the plan of action with Lieutenant Governor Sherwood Dixon and other state officials, was off again within a few hours to resume the campaign. In his last fireside chat the night before election, the Democratic candidate flashed on the nation's TV screens accompanied by sons Borden & John Fell. Wearily he told his audience that the 14 weeks since his nomination had been "a long, long time." He went on: "Looking back, I am content. Win or lose, I have told you the truth as I see it...I have not done as well as I should like to have done, but I have done my best..." When his TV time ran out, the governor still had several crucial sentences of his speech left to go. These he delivered in an anticlimactic five-minute broadcast an hour later. Election night Stevenson settled down to listen to the increasingly disheartening returns on a portable radio in a ground-floor office of the Illinois governor's mansion at Springfield. At 12:40 in the morning, when Democratic hopes were clearly dead, he drove over to his election-eve campaign headquarters in Springfield's Leland Hotel. Smiling as the Democratic crowd loyally chanted "We want Stevenson," the governor, in a generous and graceful speech, conceded the election to Dwight Eisenhower. Said he: "The people have rendered their verdict, and I gladly accept it. General Eisenhower has been a great leader in war. He has been a vigorous and valiant opponent in the campaign. These qualities will now be dedicated to leading us all through the next four years...I urge you all to give General Eisenhower the support he will need to carry out the great tasks that lie before him. I pledge him mine." In the course of his campaign, Adlai Stevenson had become famous for his anecdotes. None he had ever told was more fitting than the one which he added to his formal concession statement. Someone, he said, had once asked Lincoln how he felt after losing a political campaign. Said Stevenson: "He said he felt like a little boy who stubbed his toe in the dark. He was too old to cry, and it hurt too much to laugh." "A Place to Start" "This is no ordinary election eve," said Dwight Eisenhower as he closed his campaign in Boston Monday night. "This is a troubled and decisive moment in the history of man's long march from darkness toward light..." Over TV and radio from Boston's Garden, Ike made his last, best speech of the campaign. He put aside hard knocks at the opposition, to speak "in terms as simple as these-of night and day, of the evil we face and the goodness we cherish, of the tyranny we confront and the freedom we defend..." Forty years of service, in 40 years of great events, eh said, had taught him the meaning of five words: "Peace, evil, unity, faith, hope." With the impressive sincerity that is the Eisenhower hallmark, he told what the five words meant to him, and how they would guide him in whatever decision the nation should give: "Peace is the dearest treasure in the sight of free men. I have learned this the stern way-from the sight of war." So, too, had he learned of evil: "The organized evil challenging free men in their quest of peace." The great battle against Communism is above all a moral encounter, and freedom needs to gird itself with unity of all classes for the common good, with "the faith teaching us all that we are children of God," with hope "in the greatness and genius of America." "Let's Just Stroll." Half an hour later, on the telescreen, came the Republicans' most novel message over the new medium: an hour-long program, called "Crusade in America." From Eisenhower and Nixon seated together informally in Boston, it flashed across the country, reaching party voices as distant as California's Governor Earl Warren, picking up issues of the campaign (e.g., a cinema snatch of Theron Lamar Caudle, of mink coat fame, testifying before congressional investigators), returning to Ike at midnight for a last brief appeal. Then the general, after his 309th speech since the campaign began, entrained for his New York headquarters. For the first time in grueling weeks, he relaxed at a party aboard the train (up until 3 a.m.). At 7:15, at Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal, he seemed a little weary. "Let's just stroll," he said to Mamie, and, forgoing his usual military pace, they walked up the ramp to his waiting limousine. They voted at 7:38, near their Morningside heights residence. They rested most of the day. The returns were coming in, as Ike and Mamie motored downtown to Manhattan's Commodore Hotel. The general looked in, shortly after 10 p.m., at 2,000 festive party workers gathered in the main ballroom. "Win, lose or draw," he told them in a five-minute talk, their campaign had "irrevocably removed complacency" from Washington. Victory was in the air, but Ike, in tuxedo and black tie, radiating confidence, grinning with exuberance he could not quite hide, still made no claim. "The real job is still ahead," he said, "working for a better America." The campaign had been waged for "a line of departure, a place from which to start." "Let Us Unite." Not long after, everyone listening to the returns knew that the election had been won. Mamie, in short black lace evening dress, fairly jumped with excitement. Party veterans, like Mrs. Katherine Howard, national secretary and adviser to Ike on the women's vote, cried over & over: "I can't believe it, I can't believe it." At 2:02 a.m., with the message of congratulation from Adlai Stevenson in his hands, smiling happily and shrugging in mock despair as the ballroom crowd cheered deliriously. President- elect Eisenhower gave a traditional victory speech. To his defeated opponent he had wired thanks for a "courteous and generous message" and a plea "that men and women of good will of both parties forget the political strife of the past and devote themselves to a single purpose of a better future." Then he spoke humbly of the weight of decision and responsibility, voiced his gratitude for the crusade won, summoned the country to a new crusade: "Let us unite for the better future of America, for our children and our grandchildren.... We cannot now do all the job ahead of us except as a united people...." </body> </article> </text>