Self-confident Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the thirty-second President of the United States, had a face that provided more than its fair share of material for political cartoonists. His pointy nose, jutting, lower jaw, and overpowering grin, along with his round, thin-rimmed glasses, and long, thin, black cigarette holder which he always held tightly and at an upright angle between his teeth, made him one of the most easily recognizable characters of the twentieth century. His soft and reassuring voice became a familiar sound to Americans who tuned in on radio to the President's "fireside chats" which were broadcast from the White House every week during the Depression. Crippled by a bout with poliomyelitis at the age of 39, F.D.R. had a stocky, overdeveloped upper body, and small, dysfunctional legs which were usually bound in the metal braces he used along with crutches to help him walk. A large portion of the American population, though familiar with the President's face and voice, never knew that the President was crippled, as he rarely, if ever, made mention of his handicap. F.D.R. possessed the same strength, belief in reform, and relentless, independent pride as his fifth cousin, former President Theodore Roosevelt. He was elected four times to the office of President, and served three full terms. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was President during one of the most difficult periods of American history, that of the Great Depression, and during one of the most difficult periods in the history of the world, that of World War II.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born January 30, 1882 in Hyde Park, New York. He was the only child born to Sarah Delano and James Roosevelt. James Roosevelt, a prominent New York lawyer and vice president of Delaware and Hudson Railway, also had a son through a previous marriage. Sarah Delano was twenty six when she married James Roosevelt, the same age as James' first son. Franklin led a pampered and isolated existence as a boy. Sarah Roosevelt was fiercely overprotective, and James Roosevelt made sure that Franklin had the best of everything, though he also pushed the boy to excel in academics. Franklin received his early education from private tutors. He traveled with his family frequently to the countries of Europe. When Franklin was fourteen, he was enrolled at a prestigious preparatory school in Groton, Massachusetts. In 1900 Franklin entered Harvard where he became editor of the Harvard Crimson. He graduated Harvard in three years, but stayed on for a fourth year as a graduate student of history and economics. In 1904 Franklin entered Columbia Law School in New York City. Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed the bar in 1907 and left Columbia without receiving a degree. He remained in New York City, where he took a job as a law clerk for the firm of Carter, Ledyard, and Milburn.
While studying law at Columbia, Franklin married his fifth cousin Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. Franklin and Eleanor were married on March 7, 1905. Eleanor had lost both of her parents at a very early age, and so during the ceremony she was given away by her uncle, former President Theodore Roosevelt. The couple had one daughter and five sons, one of whom died in infancy. James Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt Jr. both served in the United States House of Representatives. Eleanor Roosevelt used her position as first lady to draw attention to many civil rights issues. She continued to be politically active until her death in 1962.
See Eleanor Roosevelt: As First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt worked extensively with the United Nations, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and other social reform organizations.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt entered politics in 1910 with a Democratic bid for the New York State Senate. Despite the large Republican population in the district for which he was running, Roosevelt won the election. He was re-elected in 1912, but left his term unfinished when President Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1913. When World War I broke out in Europe in 1914, Roosevelt fought for a Naval build up. When the United States entered the war in 1918, he requested permission to enter active service but was twice denied. He made numerous inspection trips to Europe during the war and masterminded the "North Sea Mine Barrage," which was instrumental in turning the Naval war against the Germans in favor of the Allies. Roosevelt resigned his position when the Democratic National Convention nominated him to the Vice Presidential position under James M. Cox in 1920. The Cox/Roosevelt ticket lost the election to Harding/Coolidge by an overwhelming margin in both the popular election and the electoral college.
In 1921, while vacationing at his island home in Campobello, New Brunswick, Canada, Franklin Roosevelt was out sailing when he was thrown from his boat. Three days later he contracted poliomyelitis, which left him paralyzed from the neck down. He later regained the use of his upper body, but his legs never fully recovered. Through swimming at his home in Warm Springs, Georgia, he was able to rehabilitate his legs enough to be able to walk with the aid of crutches. In 1927, he established the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation to provide inexpensive treatment to other victims of polio.
In 1924 Roosevelt co-established the firm of Roosevelt and O'Connor in New York City. Around the same time he became vice president in the Fidelity and Deposit Company which dealt in surety bonds.
On June 26, 1924 Roosevelt appeared before the Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City to nominate Governor Alfred E. Smith for President. Governor Smith did not receive the nomination that year, but Roosevelt's speech, and his long journey to the podium with the help of his son, was well received by the Democrats. The 1924 speech marked Roosevelt's return to politics after his bout with polio. Roosevelt nominated Alfred Smith again in 1928, and Smith was nominated on the first ballot. Smith urged Roosevelt to run for governor of New York in order to strengthen Democratic vote in that state. Alfred Smith lost the presidential election of 1928 to Herbert Hoover, despite Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Democratic victory in the race for governor of New York. Governor Roosevelt provided income tax relief to New York farmers and passed legislation to lower the costs of public utilities and legislation which provided for old age pensions and unemployment relief. He reformed the state prison system and established the Power Authority of the Saint Lawrence River. Roosevelt was overwhelmingly re-elected governor of New York in 1930.
At the Chicago Democratic National Convention of 1932, Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York bid for the nomination but was unable to secure a two thirds majority. He struck a deal with rival candidate John Nance Garner, offering Garner the Vice Presidency in return for throwing his support over to Roosevelt. Garner accepted the deal, and Roosevelt was nominated on the fourth ballot. With Roosevelt's backing, John Nance Garner was nominated Vice President on the first ballot. That year the Republicans re-nominated President Herbert Hoover and Vice President Charles Curtis. Roosevelt campaigned on a platform of recovery through the establishment of federal works programs and the establishment of federal unemployment insurance, calling his program the "New Deal." Roosevelt and Garner beat Hoover and Curtis by a strong margin in the popular vote and by 472 to 59 in the electoral college. Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the thirty-second President of the United States on March 4, 1933.
See Vice President John Nance Garner: John Garner ironically started off as a political rival of Roosevelt's before becoming his first Vice President.
When Roosevelt took office took office in March of 1933, the Depression was at its worst. More than half of the nation's banks had closed, over 15 million people were unemployed, and more and more people everyday were becoming homeless. President Roosevelt's first official action in the White House was to declare a bank holiday which he did within twenty-four hours of his inauguration. The bank holiday, which began on March 6 and lasted four days, was instituted so that the Treasury Department could review the books of the nations banks, to provide help in the form of federal loans to those banks which proved salvageable and to permanently close those banks which could not be saved. The bank holiday put an end to the panic rushes on banks which had driven so many banks out of business. Savings holders could now rest assured that if a bank was allowed to open it was in good standing and their savings were safe. President Roosevelt then called Congress into a special session to institute his plans for recovery. He immediately pushed through legislation to abandon the gold standard, increase the availability of federal loans to farmers and home-owners, adjust the pension plans of veterans and government employees, and create a federal bank deposit insurance. Also established was the Civilian Conservation Corps which would put thousands to work restoring, improving, and protecting the nation's natural resources. The President delivered the first of His "fireside chats" from the White House on March 12, 1933. The "fireside chats" were weekly radio broadcasts made by President Roosevelt to inform the public on the progress of his recovery program. In the month that followed Congress passed the Federal Emergency Relief Act and formed the Civil Works Administration, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the National Recovery Administration, the Works Progress Administration, and numerous other recovery programs, all at the President's insistence. President Roosevelt provided the funding for the programs of his "first one hundred days" in office by raising taxes and by borrowing money through the sale of federal bonds.
A second wave of "New Deal" legislation provided for the creation of Social Security, unemployment insurance, and federal aid to children in care of the state. The Twenty-first Amendment repealing Prohibition was ratified on December 5, 1933. In January 1934 President Roosevelt's Gold Reserve Act, which removed the dollar from the 100 grain gold standard and set it at 59.06 grains, was passed by Congress. The number 59.06 was not based on any particular economical theory or equation, but was completely arbitrary (President Roosevelt picked the number 59.06 because it sounded exacting and official).
In foreign affairs, President Roosevelt instituted a "Good Neighbor" policy with the other nations of the Americas. He repealed the Platt Amendment which the United States had used under President Wilson to interfere in the affairs of Cuba, granted full independence to the Philippines, removed marines stationed in the nations of the Caribbean, and signed reciprocal trade agreements and non-aggression pacts with various Latin American countries. In hopes of establishing trade with the Soviet Union, President Roosevelt recognized the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic in November of 1933. In July of 1934, President Roosevelt attended the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
President Roosevelt received the nomination of his party again in 1936. He easily defeated the Republican candidate, Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas.
At the start of Roosevelt's second term, the Supreme Court declared a number of "New Deal" agencies, including the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the National Recovery Administration, unconstitutional. Arguing that the current justices were far too conservative, President Roosevelt submitted a proposal to Congress which called for the mandatory retirement of Supreme Court Justices over the age of 70 and an expanding of the number of justices, from 9 to 15. President Roosevelt's plan to "pack" the Supreme Court was rejected, many members of Congress, previously willing to work with the President to achieve recovery, now began to fear that the President had too much power and started to put up resistance to his projects. The President's popularity plummeted further when in 1938 he tried to force members of Congress who were opposed to his "New Deal" projects out of office. Nevertheless, when President Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented third term in 1940, he defeated Republican candidate Wendell Wilkie of Indiana by a huge margin in both the popular vote and in the electoral college.
In September of 1939, Germany had invaded Poland beginning World War II. President Roosevelt was intent on keeping the United States out of the war, but believed he should do all within his power to help secure a victory for the Allied forces. Shortly after his third inauguration in 1940, he arranged a deal with Britain to trade 50 obsolete U. S. warships for the right to lease British territory in the western Atlantic Ocean. Congress enacted the first Selective Service Act in September of 1940. Then in March of 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act which authorized the President to supply military aid to any country whose survival he deemed necessary for the United States' own security. In August of 1941, President Roosevelt met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Newfoundland where they drew up the Atlantic Charter. The Atlantic Charter was an agreement which stated that if the United State entered the war, neither the United States nor Britain could seek monetary or territorial gains in the event of an Allied victory. It also provided for the right of liberated nations to choose their own form of government, for freedom of the seas, and measures ensuring a peaceful world trade. By 1941 United States ships had long been providing protection to convoys of British merchant ships carrying war supplies to the home front, but in September of that year, President Roosevelt issued an order to U.S. ships to attack any German ship within range, thus declaring unofficial war on Germany.
President Roosevelt had issued many warnings to Japan against interfering with American trade before Japanese aggression forced him to cut off trade with Japan completely in 1940. On December 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked the United States Pacific fleet which was stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. President Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war on Japan, which he received the following day. A pact Japan had recently signed with Germany and Italy obliged those two countries to declare war on the United States. The United States declared war on Germany and Italy on December 11. President Roosevelt's focus now shifted from recovery from the Depression to achieving an Allied victory in World War II.
Early in 1943, President Roosevelt met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Casablanca, Morocco. In November of 1943, President Roosevelt met with Churchill and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek in Egypt. Later that month, Roosevelt and Churchill met with Soviet Premiere Joseph Stalin in Tehran to discuss war strategy and post-war world order. In Tehran it was decided that Germany should first be defeated before the Allies could concentrate on Japan. The "big three" met again at the Yalta resort in Crimea, U.S.S.R. in 1945. At Yalta, Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany, in exchange for territorial gains in Asia. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin drew up new post-war borders for Poland and signed the Crimea Declaration which remade the promises of the Atlantic Charter, including the promise to let every liberated country choose its own form of government by way of free elections. Then in April of 1945 at the San Francisco conference, an organization was established specifically for the maintaining of post-war order. Roosevelt called the new organization the "United Nations."
In 1944 Roosevelt had defeated the Republican candidate, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, for a fourth term as President. In 1940 President Roosevelt replaced Vice President John Nance Garner with Henry Wallace. Democratic leaders felt that Wallace was too liberal and convinced Roosevelt to drop him in favor of Harry S. Truman.
See Vice President Henry Wallace: Henry Wallace replaced John Garner as Roosevelt's Vice President in 1940, but he too would be replaced by Harry S. Truman.
In April of 1945, President Roosevelt was at his home in Warm Springs, Georgia, preparing for the United Nations conference to take place in San Francisco later that month. While having his portrait painted on April 12, 1945, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died. His body was taken to Washington D.C. for services and then buried at his Home in Hyde Park, New York, which is now a national museum.
