Dewey, Thomas Edmund

Dewey, Thomas Edmund (1902-1971), American lawyer and political leader, defeated by President Harry S. Truman in the 1948 presidential election. Dewey was born in Owosso, Michigan, and educated at the University of Michigan and Columbia University. In 1933 Dewey served as United States attorney for the southern district of New York, and in 1934-1935 he was special assistant to US Attorney-General Homer Stille Cummings. Later in 1935, he was appointed special prosecutor for a grand jury investigation into vice and racketeering in New York. In this assignment, which he completed in 1937, and in his next assignment as district attorney of New York County (Manhattan) from 1937 to 1941, Dewey gained national prominence as a crusading prosecutor. In 1942, 1946, and 1950 he was elected governor of New York State. He was the Republican nominee for president in 1944, when he lost to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and in 1948, when, unexpectedly, he was defeated by Truman. Dewey was a leading supporter of General Dwight D. Eisenhower in the presidential election of 1952. He retired from active politics in January 1955 and resumed his law practice in New York. He was the author of Journey to the Far Pacific (1952).