Assuming
the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin
D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in
themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous
action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, "the only
thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Born in
1882 at Hyde Park, New York--now a national historic site--he
attended Harvard University and Columbia Law School. On St.
Patrick's Day, 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt.
Following
the example of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt,
whom he greatly admired, Franklin D. Roosevelt entered public
service through politics, but as a Democrat. He won election
to the New York Senate in 1910. President Wilson appointed him
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he was the Democratic
nominee for Vice President in 1920.
In the
summer of 1921, when he was 39, disaster hit-h-e was stricken
with poliomyelitis. Demonstrating indomitable courage, he
fought to regain the use of his legs, particularly through
swimming. At the 1924 Democratic Convention he dramatically
appeared on crutches to nominate Alfred E. Smith as "the
Happy Warrior." In 1928 Roosevelt became Governor of New
York.
He was
elected President in November 1932, to the first of four
terms. By March there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost
every bank was closed. In his first "hundred days,"
he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring
recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed
and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform,
especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley
Authority.
By 1935
the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but
businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against
Roosevelt's New Deal program. They feared his experiments,
were appalled because he had taken the Nation off the gold
standard and allowed deficits in the budget, and disliked the
concessions to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new program
of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new
controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work
relief program for the unemployed.
In 1936
he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin. Feeling he was armed
with a popular mandate, he sought legislation to enlarge the
Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key New Deal
measures. Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but a
revolution in constitutional law took place. Thereafter the
Government could legally regulate the economy.
Roosevelt
had pledged the United States to the "good neighbor"
policy, transforming the Monroe Doctrine from a unilateral
American manifesto into arrangements for mutual action against
aggressors. He also sought through neutrality legislation to
keep the United States out of the war in Europe, yet at the
same time to strengthen nations threatened or attacked. When
France fell and England came under siege in 1940, he began to
send Great Britain all possible aid short of actual military
involvement.
When the
Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt
directed organization of the Nation's manpower and resources
for global war.
Feeling
that the future peace of the world would depend upon relations
between the United States and Russia, he devoted much thought
to the planning of a United Nations, in which, he hoped,
international difficulties could be settled.
As the
war drew to a close, Roosevelt's health deteriorated, and on
April 12, 1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died of a
cerebral hemorrhage.
-
Franklin
D Roosevelt