Franklin D. Roosevelt

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• Born: 30 January 1882
• Birthplace: Hyde Park, New York
• Died: 12 April 1945 (cerebral hemorrhage)
• Best Known As: The president who led the U.S. through World War II

President Franklin D. Roosevelt managed to pull Americans out of the Great Depression and lead them to victory in World War II. His support of an active federal government shaped American politics through the remainder of the 20th century. FDR was a Democrat, and his package of federally-supported public works and social programs was known collectively as the New Deal. Roosevelt was so popular he was elected four times -- a lengthy run which led to the passage of the 22nd Amendment, restricting presidents to two terms. He died in office only a few months into his fourth term. His successor was Harry Truman.

Roosevelt was a distant cousin of his own wife Eleanor Roosevelt and also of the 26rd president, Theodore Roosevelt... Roosevelt's terrier Fala was a popular White House figure from 1940 until FDR's death, and is buried near FDR at Hyde Park, New York... FDR was the 32nd president; he was preceded by number 31, Herbert Hoover.

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(b. Hyde Park, New York, 30 Jan. 1882; d. 12 Apr. 1945) US; Governor of New York 1929 – 32, President 1933 – 45 Born to well-to-do parents of Dutch and Flemish descent, Roosevelt was educated at Groton, Harvard University, and Columbia Law School. Each of his parents was independently wealthy and supportive, and he enjoyed a leisurely and liberal upbringing. Though he enjoyed reading, he did not apply himself to scholarship and coasted through his education, paying more attention to getting onto the football team at Harvard (he failed) than to his grades. At Harvard, he edited the student newspaper, but his educational career was undistinguished. He was married young — in 1905 — to a distant cousin, Eleanor, and after taking his bar exams in 1907 practised law in a New York City firm.

A leisurely life as a lawyer soon lost its appeal and in 1910 he accepted an invitation by Democratic leaders in upstate New York to contest a seat in the state Senate. He threw himself into the race and achieved an unexpected victory. His spell in the New York Senate allowed him to develop his political skills and he showed some independence by leading a revolt against the choice of the party bosses in the selection of a candidate to a fill a vacancy for a US Senate seat. He was re-elected in 1912. The same year he attended the Democratic Convention and worked hard to deliver the New York delegation to Woodrow Wilson, a task in which he was ultimately successful. Wilson rewarded him by appointing him Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Roosevelt was delighted. He loved the sea and it was a post once held by his distant cousin, Theodore Roosevelt. He performed creditably in the post — he was an efficient administrator — and helped prepare a fleet ready for combat in the First World War. He continued in the post after contesting unsuccessfully the nomination for a US Senate seat in 1914. He was an observer at the Versailles Peace Conference. In 1920 he seconded the nomination of Alfred E. Smith as Democratic candidate for President. The convention chose James E. Cox instead. Cox then chose Roosevelt as his running-mate. Roosevelt had a well-known name, experience in government, and helped balance the ticket, but 1920 was a Republican year and the pair went down to a heavy defeat. The contest nonetheless established Roosevelt as a national figure.

The following year Roosevelt was struck by personal tragedy. Suffering one evening from a chill after being in icy water, he went to bed and awoke in pain to find his legs would not support him. He was paralysed from the chest downwards, the victim — at the age of 39 — of infantile paralysis. Recovery was initially slow but Roosevelt fought to regain some degree of independence and to rebuild his life. The effect of the illness was to galvanize him, to give him a determination that was previously lacking in his somewhat pampered existence. He learned to walk a few steps with the aid of leg braces. He drove a specially adapted car. He was later to develop a technique of appearing to walk while holding for support on aides. He resumed his legal career. Three years after being struck down he also briefly re-entered politics. He nominated Alfred E. Smith — the Governor of New York — as candidate for President at the 1924 Democratic convention. The convention again opted for another candidate but Roosevelt's powerful speech was greeted with a prolonged ovation. He had started his political comeback. When four years later, the Democratic nomination did nominate Smith, Smith urged Roosevelt to run for the governorship of New York. Roosevelt was reluctant — he hoped treatment would still allow him to walk without braces — but was nominated by acclamation by his party's state convention. After a vigorous campaign throughout the state, Roosevelt bucked the national Republican tide by winning election with a majority of 25,564 votes. Sixteen years after being elected to the state Senate, he was back in elective office. He proved to be an activist in office, pushing (not always successfully — the State Legislature was Republican-controlled) for new and radical programmes. Following the onset of the Depression, the political tide turned in his favour and he was re-elected by an overwhelming majority in 1930. His victory established him as a potential candidate for the presidency.

As Governor of New York he was to adopt practices and policies that were to be drawn on later when he entered the White House. He utilized a "Brains Trust" of leading figures to advise him and he presented a range of measures — including unemployment relief, old-age pensions, and farm relief — to tackle the effects of the Depression. He instituted a Temporary Emergency Relief Administration to assist those in need in the state. He also stood up to party bosses and in his second term moved against the scandal-ridden New York city machine, achieving the resignation of the mayor.

Roosevelt built up his team of advisers and began planning a bid for the presidency. He was one of four candidates when the Democratic convention met in 1932. After some horse-trading, he was nominated on the fourth ballot. He accepted the nomination in person and made his famous declaration, "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." He selected House Speaker John Nance Garner, a Texan, as his running mate (a consequence of the convention horse-trading) and started out on a nationwide campaign. He advocated unemployment relief and tariff reform and was committed to a repeal of prohibition. He started to attack the powerful business corporations and to promote a more equitable distribution of wealth. Roosevelt offered hope against the tired administration of Herbert Hoover and won an overwhelming victory by 22,809,638 votes to 15,758,901. Three months after his victory he survived an assassination attempt in Florida (five others were wounded, one fatally, by the shots from a deranged unemployed bricklayer) and was inaugurated on 4 March 1933. In his address, he declared that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". The country "asks for action, and action now. Our greatest primary task is to put people to work".

No sooner was he ensconced in the White House than he embarked on a hectic programme of reform. He closed the banks for four days. Congress was summoned into special session on 9 March and in a 100-day sitting was sent a raft of measures. Greater powers were taken to control the economy. The Emergency Banking Relief Act gave the President and the Treasury greater powers over the control of credit, currency, and foreign exchange. By resolution of Congress, the USA went off the gold standard. Public spending was reduced — the Economy Act cut federal salaries — and tax revenue increased: the Beer-Wine Revenue Act legalized the sale of the drinks and brought them within the tax mechanism. (Prohibition was repealed with the successful passage of the 21st Amendment.) The best-known measures were those providing federal relief. The Federal Emergency Relief Act gave direct relief to the states and localities, the Agricultural Adjustment Act subsidized farmers, the National Industrial Recovery Act established the Public Works Administration to create work in construction as well as protecting the rights of labour, and the Civilian Conservation Corps was founded to provide work for young men in public works projects. The Tennessee Valley Authority was created to administer a massive works programme throughout the Tennessee Valley, providing work for thousands, building dams, and generating an unprecedented public utility in the form of electricity.

The measures provided the basis for Roosevelt's New Deal. Even after the famous first "100 Days", Roosevelt was not finished. Later measures followed. Greater regulation of the economy and the stock market was introduced. More public works projects were established. Labour rights were extended. The Social Security Act of 1935 broke new ground in making provision for relief to the unemployed, the disabled, the needy, and for retirement payments to the elderly. Within three years of taking office, Roosevelt had changed dramatically the relationship between the public and private sector in making provision for the citizen.

Roosevelt's New Deal measures helped restore public confidence but they attracted opposition from significant sections of the business community and especially many in the financial community. Some of the measures also fell foul of the Supreme Court. In May 1935, the court struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act as unconstitutional, claiming that it imposed regulations on intrastate activity not permitted by the constitution. The Agricultural Adjustment Act and other acts were also later struck down.

Such setbacks did not prevent Roosevelt from sweeping to victory in the 1936 presidential election, carrying every state bar two against his Republican opponent, Kansas Governor Alf Landon. He amassed almost 28 million votes against less than 17 million for Landon. Although he was to be elected to the presidency twice more, this election constituted Roosevelt's high point in the domestic politics of the USA. Thereafter, he was not to achieve the success he had in his first term. He sought to limit the Supreme Court by introducing a bill giving him power to appoint a new justice for every existing justice over the age of 70. Congress rejected his "court packing" proposal. The measure appeared to achieve its purpose, even though it was not passed: members of the court were worried by what had happened and two of them switched sides in votes on subsequent New Deal measures (known as "the switch in time that saved nine"). However, it served to sour relations between President and Congress and Roosevelt compounded the situation in 1938 by campaigning in the congressional elections against members who had opposed his plans. He failed in his efforts and the Republicans made significant gains. Though Roosevelt achieved passage of some measures in 1938, the outcome of the elections in November put an end to a continuation of the New Deal. Thereafter the President achieved the passage of no major domestic legislation.

The President's attention was being drawn more and more towards events in Europe and Asia. In 1937 and 1938 he warned of what was happening in Europe. Congress for its part passed in 1937 a Neutrality Act, imposing an arms embargo. Roosevelt responded to the Soviet-German non-aggression pact and the German invasion of Poland in 1939 by asking Congress to lift the arms embargo. Congress refused. In 1940 Roosevelt acted unilaterally, providing the United Kingdom with fifty old American destroyers in return for leases on military bases in the West Indies. As the Axis powers made further territorial gains, Roosevelt pressed for an increase in the production of planes. At the same time, a peacetime draft was introduced.

In pressing for help to the Allies, Roosevelt was running ahead of public opinion — there was widespread opposition to involvement in the war — and doing so at a time when a presidential election was imminent. Roosevelt defied tradition by seeking and gaining nomination for a third term. He remained popular but circumstances were not as propitious as in 1936. His decision to run was used against him and the Republicans nominated a popular and moderate candidate, Wendell Willkie. Promising not to send Americans into foreign wars, Roosevelt won comfortably, but not as decisively as he had four years before. He won 27 million votes to 22 million for Willkie.

Roosevelt continued to take measures to help the Allies and to develop America's fighting capability. American forces were stationed in Greenland and Iceland. Ships belonging to Axis powers were seized in US ports after a Nazi submarine sank a US destroyer. Roosevelt, however, still faced a powerful "America First" movement. The issue was resolved on 7 December 1941 when Japanese forces attacked the US fleet in Pearl Harbor. The following day Roosevelt addressed Congress — dubbing 7 December "a date that will live in infamy" — and sought a declaration of war, which was duly forthcoming. Thereafter Roosevelt was transformed into a powerful war leader, his powers as Commander-in-Chief giving him a latitude in foreign affairs that was denied him in the domestic arena. The American war effort was stepped up dramatically, Roosevelt met with the British Prime Minister, Churchill, and later with Churchill and the Soviet leader, Stalin, to co-ordinate Allied strategy. Roosevelt was the most powerful figure — with America having a combination of economic power and manpower that could not be matched by Britain and (in economic terms) by Russia. Roosevelt was able to determine the broad strategy, leaving the implementation largely to some very able military leaders. His leadership was as important in the domestic arena as it was in the military. He provided the same inspiration to the American people in the war as he had done during the Depression. The war also served to bring the nation out of the Depression, rearmament providing the boost that had not been provided by Roosevelt's New Deal measures. The United States ended the war as the most powerful economic nation.

Roosevelt's wartime leadership put him in a powerful position to seek re-election in 1944. Though clearly ailing, he was leading the nation at time of war. He dumped his left-leaning Vice-President, Henry Wallace, in favour of Senator Harry S Truman, and together they won a race that was the closest of Roosevelt's career: 25.6 million votes to 22 million for the Republican, Thomas E. Dewey. Three months after the victory, Roosevelt met with Churchill and Stalin at Yalta to decide the postwar map of Europe, a map that was to prove highly controversial. In order to maintain Soviet support, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to a disposition of forces that was later to be used by Stalin in imposing Soviet control in Eastern Europe.

Roosevelt looked unwell at Yalta, a fact commented upon by Churchill. On his return to the USA, the President addressed Congress but did so from a chair. He went to Warm Springs, Georgia — to a health resort which he had helped create — to rest. On 12 April, complaining of a headache, he collapsed, went into a coma, and — two hours later — died of a brain haemorrhage. He was 63 years of age.

Roosevelt is the outstanding President of the twentieth century. In polls of historians, conducted variously since 1948, he has always been voted among the three greatest presidents in US history, Lincoln always coming first and Roosevelt or George Washington coming second. Roosevelt transformed the office of the President and, indeed, transformed the economic and social structure of the United States. He built the presidential office into a powerful and organized unit of government. He established the Executive Office of the the President. He drew on many of the leading minds of the time. He transformed the President into Chief Legislator as well as — in the terminology of Emmet John Hughes — the Maker of World Peace. He not only made the President the most powerful person in the USA, he also made him the most powerful elected official in the world.

Roosevelt achieved all this despite being confined to a wheelchair. His disability was hidden from the public. Roosevelt was a great showman. He knew how to charm. He also knew how to act and recognized a good idea when he saw one. He was not an original thinker, but he brought in a team of first-rate thinkers and drew on their ideas as he saw fit. He was not averse to drawing on ideas originating from other sources. Many New Deal measures had their genesis in congressional bills. Roosevelt picked them up, revised them, and presented them as his own creation. He liked to be in control. He vetoed bills in order to demonstrate to Congress who was in charge. He appointed groups of advisers to provide advice on the same topic so that he could choose between them. He achieved a mastery of government unsurpassed in the history of the presidency.

At the personal level, Roosevelt achieved his ambitions despite his physical handicap, perhaps even because of it: his illness and recovery gave him a determination to succeed. He was a man who threw himself into his work and achieved a high level of emotional reward from it. He pushed as far as he could go — sometimes, in the eyes of critics, too far — and demonstrably enjoyed exercising power. He had a remarkable wife who became a public figure in her own right. More socially aware than Franklin, she showed him areas of social deprivation that shocked him. She busied herself in doing good works, both during the Depression and during the war. In many ways, she was Franklin's "legs", visiting stricken communities and raising morale among the troops. Franklin's infidelity — he had an affair with Eleanor's social secretary, Lucy Mercer, who was to be at his side when he died — appeared to contribute to them leading separate lives, though Eleanor remained a powerful influence, once likened to a Minister without Portfolio. She has since served as an icon for many feminists.

Roosevelt's presidency has been subject to various revisionist interpretations, including those that argue that the New Deal should be credited to Congress and to Roosevelt's advisers, and that Roosevelt manipulated US entry into the Second World War. Such interpretations have not dented Roosevelt's standing. He is viewed as having been the right man for the right time — providing inspiration and leadership at a time when Americans cried out for it. His presidency has provided the benchmark for his successors.

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945), US president 1933-45 during the Great Depression and WW II. He served four and a half years longer than any other, and if the monumental busts of the four greatest presidents were to be sculpted on Mount Rushmore today, his would join those of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln by acclamation, replacing his distant cousin and youthful inspiration Theodore, whose niece Eleanor he married in 1905. She was to prove a formidable political asset throughout his career; less welcome was her self-appointed role as his social conscience.

Nothing FDR did as president is quite as remarkable as the fact that he won the office at all, despite being an aristocrat and wheelchair-bound after an attack of polio in 1921. Like Theodore before him, early in his career he sparred with his own New York party's corrupt urban ‘machine’, but unlike him he won two terms as governor (1928 and 1930) against a country-wide Republican tide, during which time he matured and learned the virtue of accommodation. The platform that bore him to the presidency in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression was for further deflation and austerity, but once in power he implemented the ‘New Deal’, a greatly expanded version of the programme advocated by his opponent Hoover, doomed by incumbency when industrial production fell by 40 per cent and there were 13 million unemployed.

Although it was WW II that brought the economic depression to an end, the New Deal and FDR's reassuring radio broadcasts were effective in countering the no less significant psychological depression gripping the country. He was never a Keynesian and the money his numerous new ‘Alphabet Agencies’ (FERA, CCC, RFC, AAA, NIRA, WPA, etc.) poured into the economy was incidental to his main aim of restoring hope and confidence. The most abidingly popular of his measures was the provision of a state pension scheme with the Social Security Act of 1935, but his main ambition was crowned by winning various test cases before a generally hostile Supreme Court, which affirmed almost unlimited federal power to regulate the economy.

With characteristic insouciance, he campaigned for his unprecedented second re-election in 1940 with the promise to keep America out of the wars engulfing the rest of the world, while conducting what can only be called a conspiracy with Churchill to do the opposite in Europe, and pursuing a policy actively hostile to Japanese expansionism in the Far East. Once re-elected, he subverted his own Neutrality Acts and aligned the USA firmly on the side of Britain against Germany with the Lend-Lease Act and by taking over convoy escort duties in the eastern Atlantic. He anticipated a Japanese attack in south-east Asia and the Philippines but was outraged when they also struck at Pearl Harbor, after which Germany and Italy did Britain and the USSR the enormous favour of declaring war on the USA in solidarity with their Axis ally.

FDR had, barely, managed to keep conscription (‘the draft’) in being and had quietly organized agencies to direct a war economy, such that overwhelming American industrial and manpower resources were promptly mobilized and rapidly deployed under the brilliant direction of Nimitz in the Pacific and Marshall in Europe. Being better served by his military commanders, FDR was not tempted to exercise operational control, unlike Churchill or his own great predecessor Lincoln. He did adopt the latter's formula of ‘unconditional surrender’ with greater justification, given the very real criminality of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan and the need to maintain unity among allies who might otherwise have been tempted to make deals at each other's expense.

His vision for the post-war world was based on the ‘five policemen’ concept in which the USA, Britain, France, China, and the USSR would work together to preserve peace through the UN. Reluctant to admit that he indulged in appeasement, apologists argue that ill health undermined his faculties and permitted Stalin to ‘bamboozle’ him at Yalta in February 1945. This is to deny ample evidence that he regarded Churchill as the greater obstacle to his vision of a post-war world advancing to harmony through the pursuit of the ‘self-evident’ principles of the US Declaration of Independence. It remains a quintessentially American mystery how such a shrewd politician could have believed with such heartbreaking sincerity that events in China would develop favourably to his vision, or that bankrupt Britain could long sustain an independent worldwide role, or that the Soviet dictator would sincerely espouse principles that self-evidently undermined his own power.

— Hugh Bicheno

Born to the Hudson River aristocracy of upstate New York, Roosevelt attended Groton, Harvard College, and Columbia Law School before marrying his distant cousin Eleanor Roosevelt in 1905. Following election to the New York State Senate (1911–13), he served as assistant secretary of the navy in Woodrow Wilson's administration (1913–21). A devotee of Alfred T. Mahan's writings, the young FDR championed “Big Navy” preparedness prior to American entry into World War I, instituted “Naval Plattsburg” battleship cruises to recruit civilian reservists, and advocated a system of universal military training. After a three‐month tour of the battle zones in 1918, he said that “the last thing this country should do is ever to send an army to Europe again.”

An unsuccessful candidate for vice president in 1920, Roosevelt overcame crippling polio to win the New York governorship in 1928 and attain the White House in 1932. Espousing isolationist views during his first two terms, FDR gave priority to New Deal reforms over foreign policy, accepted congressional revision of neutrality laws, and reacted hesitantly to Axis aggression in Asia and Europe. Notwithstanding his “Arsenal of Democracy” speech in December 1940, he had urged moderate rearmament until Adolf Hitler's conquest of France and supported the Selective Service Act of 1940 only after political opponents had introduced it. While promising to protect the hemisphere from war, he employed the neutrality patrol, the Destroyers‐for‐Bases Agreement, Lend‐Lease, and economic embargoes primarily to assist potential Allies (Britain, China, Soviet Union) in steps short of full belligerency. Emphasizing naval power and airpower instead of a second American Expeditionary Force, FDR proceeded to “wage war, but not declare it.”

After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 catapulted the United States into World War II, some isolationist historians later charged that Roosevelt had provoked the Japanese into firing the first shot so as to overcome American isolationism and thus ensure support, via the Pacific “back door,” for war against Japan's ally, Nazi Germany. Most scholars reject conspiracy and explain Pearl Harbor as the consequence of intelligence errors, missed clues, overconfidence, and plain bad luck. Nonetheless, Japan's attack and Hitler's subsequent declaration of war gave FDR the political leeway to implement a “Europe‐first” military strategy. Fearful that mounting American casualties in the Pacific would focus public resentment against Japan, the president reaffirmed Anglo‐American plans to defeat Hitler first. Against recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to concentrate forces in England for a cross‐Channel invasion by spring 1943, he accepted Winston S. Churchill's alternative plan, Operation Torch, for the North Africa Campaign in November 1942. This decision led logically to the invasion and conquest of Sicily and Italy in 1943 and effectively postponed the liberation of France (Operation Overlord) until 1944. Apart from Roosevelt's desire for Americans to fight Germans somewhere in 1942, British strategy predominated in the two years after Pearl Harbor because England had fully mobilized, whereas America had not, and any combined operation had to depend largely on British troops, shipping, and casualties.

Despite the European emphasis, Roosevelt did reinforce the Pacific theater after victories at the Battle of Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway (1942) and oversaw a controversial two‐prong strategy in which the navy and Marines “leapfrogged” toward Tokyo across Micronesian atolls while U.S.‐Australian forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur battled northward from New Guinea to the Philippines. FDR's expectation that China would figure decisively in defeating Japan and policing postwar Asia was undermined by Japan's conquest of Burma and internal bickering between Chinese Communists and Nationalists.

Because Roosevelt sought to win the war with minimal American casualties, the country never fully mobilized its population for military service. With no threat of invasion and the bulk of Axis forces engaged in Russia and China, the president gambled that “an air war plus the Russians” meant that ninety U.S. Army divisions would be sufficient for military and political goals.

Such calculations increased dependence on Soviet Russia. With the Red Army “killing more Axis personnel … than all other twenty‐five United Nations put together,” Roosevelt sent the Soviets $11 billion in Lend‐Lease supplies, made promises for an early second front, and used personal diplomacy at Teheran (November 1943) and Yalta (February 1945). “Unconditional Surrender” assured a suspicious Josef Stalin that there would be no separate peace with Hitler or his underlings. It also underscored FDR's belief that Germany deserved punishment for Hitler's crimes, including permanent partition, demilitarization, and dismantling of heavy industry. The president's postwar plans envisaged a disarmed, decentralized, and decolonized Europe initially policed by British and Soviet armies; U.S. forces would patrol the western hemisphere and replace Japanese power in the western Pacific. Because Red Army victories guaranteed Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe, FDR urged “open” spheres and free elections and hoped that increased contacts would make the Russians “less barbarian.”

Aiding the Soviets reflected Roosevelt's military advice. Despite “assured Russian military dominance” after the war, the joint chiefs invariably opposed “get tough” policies because of military necessity, including the need for Soviet help against Japan. According to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson in 1945, “in the big military matters the Soviet Government have kept their word.” Only after the end of the war did the predominant U.S. military view of the Soviet Union change from ally to adversary.

That the cooperation with the Kremlin had limits was shown in the Manhattan Project, the secret Anglo‐American effort to acquire an atomic weapon before the Germans. Despite Danish physicist Niels Bohr's plea in 1944 that the Russians be brought into the partnership to prevent a postwar nuclear arms race, Roosevelt and Churchill chose to maintain their monopoly, partly as a hedge against Russian misbehavior.

The booming U.S. economy (the gross national product had jumped from $90.5 billion in 1939 to $211.9 billion in 1945) also provided insurance against future uncertainties, as did FDR's support for new international institutions—the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund—designed to maintain peace and prosperity after the war.

The commander in chief died of a cerebral hemorrhage in April 1945, shortly after the Yalta Conference, on the eve of final victory.

[See also Lend‐Lease Act and Agreements; World War II: Military and Diplomatic Course.]

Bibliography

• Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants and Their War, 1987.
• Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny, 1990.
• Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Homefront in World War II, 1994.
• Warren F. Kimball, Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War, 1997

(b. Hyde Park, N.Y., 30 Jan. 1882; d. Warm Springs, Ga., 12 Apr. 1945), president of the United States, 1933–1945. Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency was the longest and one of the most acclaimed in United States history. During his twelve years in office the New Deal helped to transform the structure of American government by expanding the scope and reach of federal power, by modernizing the federal bureaucracy, and by bringing into government many bright reformers who were committed to making government work to solve the social, political, and economic problems that confronted the country.

Roosevelt attended Columbia Law School for three years after his graduation from Harvard. Following admission to the New York bar, he briefly practiced in a Wall Street firm (1907–1910). He again was a member of a firm during the 1920s, but he served mainly as a name to attract clients, not as a practitioner. Roosevelt relished politics; he was a superb politician with a genius for public communication and building coalitions. He was a patrician who could trace his roots in the United States to the seventeenth century (Theodore Roosevelt was his fifth cousin), yet he was perhaps the most loved national politician of this century, easily winning four presidential elections—one, of record‐setting landslide proportions. At the age of twenty‐eight he was elected as a Democrat to the New York senate. He served in President Woodrow Wilson's cabinet as assistant secretary of the navy and lost as the Democratic vice presidential candidate in James Cox's defeat by Warren G. Harding in 1920. FDR twice won election as governor of New York, and in 1932 he secured the Democratic nomination for president. In his convincing electoral triumph over President Herbert Hoover, he forged a coalition of Progressives, northern urban liberals, conservative southern Democrats, labor unions, farmers, middle‐ and lower‐class white ethnic groups, and African‐Americans that survived almost intact for fifty years.

Roosevelt held to no fixed political vision. Rather, he had a commitment to using the federal government to accomplish tasks that he and his advisers believed were necessary to move America forward—first out of the Great Depression, and then toward victory over Axis powers in World War II. During the first hundred days (the “first New Deal”), he launched federal efforts to reform banking laws and relieve the plight of farmers and later to regulate securities. The centerpiece of his economic recovery measure was the National Recovery Administration, which was a cooperative effort between business, labor, and government. After the Supreme Court struck down the NRA, and after his overwhelming electoral victory in 1936 (which also created enormous Democratic margins in Congress), FDR switched from cooperation to confrontation with business and the wealthy. His “second New Deal” included the passage of the Wagner Act (guaranteeing unions the right to organize and bargain collectively), a large increase in the tax rate of the most wealthy, the Social Security Act, further banking reform, and the most massive public works program undertaken in American history. As he lost support for his more radical reform efforts, and as World War II began, he switched back to the more cooperative politics of the first New Deal.

Unlike another lawyer‐president, William Howard Taft, FDR had little reverence for the traditions of the Supreme Court as an institution, nor did he worship constitutional precedents. He perceived the Constitution as a document that must change to accommodate modern economic and social conditions of the country. These views led Roosevelt to the most strident and direct clash between the executive branch and the judiciary in the twentieth century: the court‐packing struggle of 1937.

Fearing that the Supreme Court—dominated in 1936–1937 by its conservative bloc joined by Justice Owen Roberts and often by Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes—would stymie New Deal efforts to cope with the Depression, FDR proposed a bill that would permit him to name additional justices to the Court and judges to the lower federal courts equal in number to jurists with ten years' service who had attained the age of seventy and refused to retire. The proposal encountered immediate and powerful opposition. Meanwhile, the Court handed down its decision in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), which by a 5‐to‐4 margin upheld a state minimum‐wage law for women and minors, thus signaling a reversal of its hostility to federal and state legislation that regulated the economy. When Justice Willis Van Devanter announced his retirement, it became apparent that the president would soon be able to nominate enough justices to assure the permanence of this turn‐around. When the Senate Judiciary Committee reported the bill out negatively, FDR lost the legislative battle but won the war for the soul of the Supreme Court.

Roosevelt named nine justices to the court, second only to the number of justices appointed by George Washington. The only seat on the Court not filled by FDR at the time of his death was that of Owen Roberts. He nominated the populist senator Hugo Black to replace Willis Van Devanter. Solicitor General Stanley Reed, who had argued many important agency cases, filled the vacancy caused by George Sutherland's resignation. Felix Frankfurter, Harvard Law School professor and a crucial member of FDR's brain trust, was named to Benjamin N. Cardozo's seat. Former Yale Law School professor and chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, William O. Douglas, succeeded Louis D. Brandeis. Attorney General Frank Murphy replaced Pierce Butler, and his replacement as attorney general, Robert H. Jackson, filled Harlan F. Stone's seat when Stone replaced Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. FDR named Senator James Byrnes to James McReynolds' seat. Byrnes resigned after only one year to take a place in the president's war cabinet and was replaced by Wiley Rutledge, a federal appellate judge who had supported court packing while dean of the University of Iowa law school. Eight of the nine men named had directly served in the New Deal, and Rutledge in writings before and on the bench had shown himself to be supportive of New Deal measures. All were selected in large part because they agreed with the issues that mattered most to FDR; that is, they were certain to take an expansive view of the power of Congress to regulate the economic life of the nation under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution. After 1938 no New Deal legislation was declared unconstitutional, and the doctrine of substantive due process rapidly withered in areas of economic regulation. FDR had no integrated constitutional philosophy that his appointees fit. They were diverse, and as the issues before the Court shifted from the scope of federal regulatory power to issues of social justice and the protection of civil rights and civil liberties in an expanded governmental state, they differed, often quite sharply, about the nature of government and judicial power.

Franklin Roosevelt had the most profound influence on the Supreme Court of any president in the twentieth century, partly because of the longevity of the justices he appointed; Douglas served thirty‐six years, Black thirty‐three years, Frankfurter twenty‐three years, and Reed nineteen years. Five of the justices deciding the most famous twentieth‐century case, Brown v. Board of Education (1954), were Roosevelt appointees. Additionally, other justices appointed later were in some measure New Dealers. Justice Abe Fortas had served in the Roosevelt administration, and others such as Justices Arthur Goldberg, William Brennan, and Thurgood Marshall were profoundly influenced by the New Deal. Perhaps Roosevelt's most enduring legacy is that the issues with which the Supreme Court dealt during the last half of the twentieth century were framed and shaped by the transformation of federal power and the federal government that FDR had created.

See also Court‐Packing Plan; History of the Court: The Depression and the Rise of Legal Liberalism; New Deal.

Bibliography

• William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal 1932–1940 (1963).
• Paul L. Murphy, The Constitution in Crisis Times, 1918–1969 (1972)

— Rayman L. Solomon

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945) 32nd president of the United States. Born to a wealthy upstate New York family, Roosevelt was raised to a life of privilege. After graduating from Harvard and attending Columbia Law School, he practiced law and ran successfully for the state Senate in 1910. Although he won reelection easily in 1912, he left Albany in 1913 to become assistant secretary of the navy, in which position he advocated preparedness for World War I. He left the navy post in 1920 to make an unsuccessful run for the vice presidency, with James M. Cox at the head of the ticket. A crippling attack of polio in 1921 led him to spend the next several years searching in vain for some treatment that would enable him to regain use of his legs. He returned to public life in 1928 with a successful run for the governorship of New York, where he developed modest programs to help combat the devastation of the Depression and began to call for federal efforts to combat the economic ruin facing the country. In 1932, having won a huge reelection victory in 1930, he took the Democratic nomination for president on the fourth ballot, pledging “a New Deal” for the country. He defeated Herbert Hoover by a comfortable margin and immediately began a remarkable campaign to rebuild the U.S. economy by creating numerous federal agencies that would offer employment opportunities to those out of work while providing economic support to those who could not work. These and other programs enjoyed varying degrees of success, but they began to change the nation's despairing mood. A second round of legislative initiatives, in 1935, dubbed the “Second New Deal, ” produced profound and sometimes permanent changes in the government's role in America's social patterns. As World War II threatened the world's security, he also gradually moved the nation from its postwar isolationism to more active support of Great Britain, in particular, winning congressional approval for Lend-Lease in 1940, which allowed him to provide Britain with arms without receiving payment for them; in 1941 he and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter, in which they condemned fascism and called for national self-determination. Later that year, he extended Lend-Lease to cover Russia. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, which Roosevelt called “a date which will live in infamy, ” the United States faced a two-front war; Roosevelt decided to concentrate on the war in Europe first. By 1943, the tide of the war seemed to have finally turned. In a series of summit meetings, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Josef Stalin negotiated plans for a long-planned Allied invasion of France's channel coast; the invasion was finally launched on June 6, 1944, D-Day. Roosevelt easily won reelection to a fourth term in 1944; at a final summit, at Yalta, in the Crimea, in January 1945, he appeared frail and ill but vigorously participated in planning for a postwar Europe, although a real accord was reached only on division of Germany. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Georgia, in April.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), thirty-second president of the United States, led the nation out of the Great Depression and later into World War II. Before he died, he cleared the way for peace, including establishment of the United Nations.

Franklin Roosevelt was born on Jan. 30, 1882, of his father's second marriage, to Sara Delano, the daughter of a prominent family. The Roosevelts had been moderately wealthy for many generations. Merchants and financiers, they had often been prominent in the civic affairs of New York. When Franklin was born, his father was 51 years old and semiretired from a railroad presidency, and his mother was 28. Franklin was often in the care of governesses and tutors, until at the age of 14 he went to Groton School. Here he received a solid classical, historical, and mathematical training and was moderately good at his studies. His earnest attempts at athletics were mostly defeated because of his tall, ungainly frame.

Roosevelt wanted to go to Annapolis, but his parents insisted on preparation for the position natural for the scion of the Delano and Roosevelt families, so he entered Harvard University. He was a reasonably good student and found a substitute for athletics in reporting for the Harvard newspaper, of which he finally became editor. While seeming to be a Cambridge socialite, he spent an extra year studying public affairs. He also met and determined to marry his cousin, Eleanor, to his mother's annoyance. Eleanor was the daughter of Elliott Roosevelt, a weak member of the family who had died early. Raised by relatives, she received a lady's education but little affection. She was shy and retiring, but Franklin found her warm, vibrant, and responsive.

Despite his mother's opposition, they were married in 1905, and Franklin entered Columbia University Law School. He prepared for the bar examinations and without taking a degree became a lawyer and entered a clerkship in the Wall Street firm of Carter, Ledyard and Milburn. He took his duties lightly, however, and it was later recalled that he had remarked to fellow clerks that he meant somehow to enter politics and finally to become president. There was never any doubt of his ambition.

Roosevelt's chance came in 1910. He accepted the Democratic nomination for the New York Senate and was elected. Opportunity for further notice came quickly. Although his backing had come from Democrats affiliated with New York City's notorious Tammany Hall, he joined a group of upstate legislators who were setting out to oppose the election of Tammany's choice for U.S. senator. The rebels were successful in forcing acceptance of another candidate.

Much of Roosevelt's wide publicity from this struggle was managed by Albany reporter Louis McHenry Howe, who had taken to the young politician and set out to further his career. (This dedication lasted until Roosevelt was safely in the White House.) The Tammany fight made Roosevelt famous in New York, but it also won him the enmity of Tammany. Still, he was reelected in 1912. That year Woodrow Wilson was elected president; Roosevelt had been a campaign worker, and his efforts had been noticed by prominent party elder Josephus Daniels. When Daniels became secretary of the Navy in Wilson's Cabinet, he persuaded Wilson to offer Roosevelt the assistant secretaryship.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy

As assistant secretary, Roosevelt began an experience that substituted for the naval career he had hoped for as a boy. Before long he became restless, however, and tried to capture the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator from New York. Wilson and Daniels were displeased. Daniels forgave him, but Wilson never afterward really trusted the brash young man. This distrust was heightened later by Roosevelt's departure from the administration's policy of neutrality in the years preceding World War I. Roosevelt openly favored intervention, agitated for naval expansion, and was known to be rather scornful of Daniels, who kept the Navy under close political discipline.

America soon entered the war, however, and Roosevelt could work for a cause he believed in. At that time there was only one assistant secretary, and he had extensive responsibilities. Howe had come to Washington with him and had become his indispensable guardian and helper. Together their management of the department was creditable.

Though Roosevelt tried several times to leave his civilian post to join the fighting forces, he was persuaded to remain. When the war came to an end and Wilson was stricken during his fight for ratification of the Versailles Treaty, there was an obvious revulsion throughout the United States from the disappointing settlements of the war. It seemed to many that the effort to make the world safe for democracy had resulted in making the world safe for the old empires.

The Allied leaders had given in to Wilson's insistence on the creation of the League of Nations only to serve their real interest in extending their territories and in imposing reparations on Germany. These reparations were so large that they could never be paid; consequently the enormous debts the Allies owed to the United States would never be paid either. The American armies had saved Europe and the Europeans were ungrateful. Resentment and disillusion were widespread.

The Republican party had the advantage of not having been responsible for these foreign entanglements. In 1920 they nominated Warren G. Harding, a conservative senator, as their presidential candidate. The Democrats nominated Governor James Cox of Ohio, who had had no visible part in the Wilson administration; the vice-presidential candidate was Roosevelt.

It was a despairing campaign; but in one respect it was a beginning rather than an ending for Roosevelt. He made a much more noticeable campaign effort than the presidential candidate. He covered the nation by special trains, speaking many times a day, often from back platforms, and getting acquainted with local leaders everywhere. He had learned the professional politician's breeziness, was able to absorb useful information, and had an infallible memory for names and faces. The defeat was decisive; but Roosevelt emerged as the most representative Democrat.

Victim of Poliomyelitis

Roosevelt retreated to a law connection in New York's financial district again and a position with a fidelity and deposit company. But in the summer of 1921, vacationing in Canada, he became mysteriously ill. His disease, polio-myelitis, was not immediately diagnosed. He was almost totally paralyzed, however, and had to be moved to New York for treatment. This was managed with such secrecy that for a long time the seriousness of his condition was not publicized. In fact, he would never recover the use of his legs, a disability that seemed to end his political career. His mother, typically, demanded that he return to Hyde Park and give up the political activities she had always deplored. He could now become a country gentleman. But Eleanor, joined by Howe, set out to renew his ambition.

Roosevelt's struggle during the convalescence of the next few years was agonizing and continually disappointing. Not much was known then about rehabilitation, and he resorted to exhausting courses of calisthenics to reactivate his atrophied muscles. In 1923 he tried the warm mineral waters of Warm Springs, Ga., where exercise was easier. He was so optimistic that he wrote friends that he had begun to feel movement in his toes. It was, of course, an illusion.

Roosevelt invested a good part of his remaining fortune in the place. It soon became a resort for those with similar ailments. The facilities were overwhelmed, but gradually an institution was built up, and the medical staff began to have more realistic knowledge of aftereffects. There were no cures; but lives could be made much more tolerable. Meanwhile Roosevelt, realizing that cures were impossible, turned to the encouragement of prevention. (Ultimately, an effective vaccine was found.)

New York Governor

While at Warm Springs in 1928, Roosevelt was called to political duty again, this time by Al Smith, whom he had put in nomination at the Democratic conventions of 1924 and 1928. Almost at once, however, it became clear that Smith could not win the election. He felt, however, that Roosevelt, as candidate for governor, would help to win New York. Roosevelt resisted. He was now a likely presidential candidate in a later, more favorable year for the Democrats; and if he lost the race for the governorship, he would be finished. But the New Yorkers insisted, and he ran and was narrowly elected.

Roosevelt began the 4 years of his New York governorship that were preliminary to his presidency, and since he was reelected 2 years later, it was inevitable that he should be the candidate in 1932. Since 1929 the nation had been sunk in the worst depression of its history, and Herbert Hoover's Republican administration had failed to find a way to recovery. This made it a favorable year for the Democrats.

First Term as President

It would be more true to say that Hoover in 1932 lost than that Roosevelt won. At any rate, Roosevelt came to the presidency with a dangerous economic crisis at its height. Industry was paralyzed, and unemployment afflicted some 30 percent of the work force. Roosevelt had promised that something would be done, but what that would be he had not specified.

Roosevelt began providing relief on a large scale by giving work to the unemployed and by approving a device for bringing increased income to farmers, who were in even worse straits than city workers. Also, he devalued the currency and enabled debtors to discharge debts that had long been frozen. Closed banks all over the country were assisted to reopen, and gradually the crisis was overcome.

In 1934 Roosevelt proposed a comprehensive social security system that, he hoped, would make another such depression impossible. Citizens would never be without at least minimum incomes again. Incidentally, these citizens became devoted supporters of the President who had given them this hope. So in spite of the conservatives who opposed the measures he collectively called the New Deal, he became so popular that he won reelection in 1936 by an unprecedented majority.

Second and Third Terms

Roosevelt's second term began with a struggle between himself and the Supreme Court. The justices had held certain of his New Deal devices to be unconstitutional. In retaliation he proposed to add new justices who would be more amenable. Many even in his own party opposed him in this attempt to pack the Court, and Congress defeated it. After this there ensued the familiar stalemate between an innovative president and a reluctant Congress.

Nevertheless in 1940 Roosevelt determined to break with tradition and run for a third term. His reasons were partly that his reforms were far from finished, but more importantly that he was now certain of Adolf Hitler's intention to subdue Europe and go on to further conquests. The immense productivity and organizational ability of the Germans would be at his disposal. Europe would be defeated unless the United States came to its support.

The presidential campaign of 1940 was the climax of Roosevelt's plea that Americans set themselves against the Nazi threat. He had sought to prepare the way in numerous speeches but had had a most disappointing response. There was a vivid recollection of the disillusion after World War I, and a good many Americans were inclined to support the Germans rather than the Allied Powers. So strong was American reluctance to be involved in another world war that in the last speeches of this campaign Roosevelt practically promised that young Americans would never be sent abroad to fight. Luckily his opponent, Republican Wendell Willkie, also favored support for the Allies. The campaign, won by a narrow majority, gave Roosevelt no mandate for intervention.

Roosevelt was not far into his third term, however, when the decision to enter the war was made for him by the Japanese, whose attack on Pearl Harbor caused serious losses to American forces there. Almost at once the White House became headquarters for those who controlled the strategy of what was now World War II. Winston Churchill came immediately and practically took up residence, bringing a British staff. Together the leaders agreed that Germany and Italy must have first attention. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander in the Pacific, was ordered to retreat from the Philippines to Australia, something he was bitterly reluctant to do. But Roosevelt firmly believed that the first problem was to help the British, and then, when Hitler turned East, to somehow get arms to the Soviets. The Japanese could be taken care of when Europe was safe.

Hitler's grand strategy was to subdue the Soviet Union, conquer North Africa, and link up with the Japanese, who were advancing rapidly across the Eastern countries. Roosevelt wanted an early crossing of the English Channel to retake France and to force Hitler to fight on two fronts. Churchill, mindful of the fearful British losses in World War I, instead wanted to attack the underbelly of Europe, cut Hitler's lines to the East, and shut him off from Africa. The invasion of Europe was postponed because it became clear that elaborate preparation was necessary. But Allied troops were sent into Africa, with Gen. Dwight Eisenhower in command, to attack Field Marshal Erwin Rommel from the rear. Eventually an Allied crossing to Sicily and a slow, costly march up the Italian peninsula, correlated with the attack across the English Channel, forced the Italian collapse and the German surrender.

Meanwhile MacArthur was belatedly given the support he needed for a brilliant island-hopping campaign that drove the Japanese back, destroyed their fleet, and endangered their home island. After the German surrender, the Pacific war was brought to an end by the American atomic bomb explosion over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By this time Roosevelt was dead. He had not participated in that doubtful decision; but he had been, with Churchill, in active command during the war until then.

Roosevelt had gone to Warm Springs early in 1945, completely exhausted. He had recently returned from a conference of Allied leaders at Yalta, where he had forced acceptance of his scheme for a United Nations and made arrangements for the Soviet Union to assist in the final subjugation of Japan. The strain was visible as he made his report to the nation.

At Warm Springs he prepared the address to be used at San Francisco, where the meeting to ratify agreements concerning the United Nations was to be held; but he found himself unable to enjoy the pine woods and the gushing waters. He sat wan and frail in his small cottage, getting through only such work as had to be done. He finished signing papers on the morning of April 12, 1945. Within hours, he suffered the massive cerebral hemorrhage that killed him.

A special train carried Roosevelt's body to Washington, and there he lay in the White House until he was taken to Hyde Park and buried in the hedged garden he himself had prepared. His grave is marked by a plain marble slab, and his wife is buried beside him. He had given the estate to the nation, and it is now a shrine much visited by those who recall or have heard how great a man he was for his time.

Further Reading

Samuel I. Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1938-1950), includes selected messages to Congress, speeches, executive orders, and transcripts from press conferences. There is also a collection of Roosevelt's letters edited by Elliott Roosevelt, F. D. R.: His Personal Letters (4 vols., 1947-1950). Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember (1949), is a frank account by Roosevelt's wife. Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (1946), and Samuel I. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt (1952), personal accounts, are helpful in assessing Roosevelt's character and work methods.

The only full biography of Roosevelt is Rexford G. Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt (1957). Frank B. Freidel's biography, Franklin D. Roosevelt (3 vols., 1952-1956), was never completed. Rexford G. Tugwell's briefer F. D. R.: Architect of an Era (1967) studies the man and his work, and his The Brains Trust (1968) tells the part played in Roosevelt's presidency by a group of helpers, mostly from Columbia University. The presidential elections involving Roosevelt are covered in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections (4 vols., 1971). James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1956), ranks Roosevelt among the great presidents. Basil Rauch, Roosevelt: From Munich to Pearl Harbor, a Study in the Creation of a Foreign Policy (1950), is a detailed, accurate history of events during this period. Written by an Albany newspaper correspondent when Roosevelt was governor, Ernest K. Lindley, The Roosevelt Revolution: First Phase (1933), helped establish Roosevelt as a progressive leader. An authoritative and readable history of Roosevelt's era is provided in the two volumes by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The New Deal in Action, 1933-1939 (1940) and The Crisis of the Old Order (1957). Another account of the period is Basil Rauch, The History of the New Deal, 1933-1938 (1944).

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Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1937. (credit: UPI)

(born Jan. 30, 1882, Hyde Park, N.Y., U.S. — died April 12, 1945, Warm Springs, Ga.) 32nd president of the U.S. (1933 – 45). Attracted to politics by the example of his cousin Theodore Roosevelt, he became active in the Democratic Party. In 1905 he married Eleanor Roosevelt, who would become a valued adviser in future years. He served in the New York senate (1910 – 13) and as U.S. assistant secretary of the navy (1913 – 20). In 1920 he was nominated by the Democrats as their vice presidential candidate. The next year he was stricken with polio; though unable to walk, he remained active in politics. As governor of New York (1929 – 33), he set up the first state relief agency in the U.S. In 1932 he won the Democratic presidential nomination with the help of James Farley and easily defeated Pres. Herbert Hoover. In his inaugural address to a nation of more than 13 million unemployed, he pronounced that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Congress passed most of the changes he sought in his New Deal program in the first hundred days of his term. He was overwhelmingly reelected in 1936 over Alf Landon. To solve legal challenges to the New Deal, he proposed enlarging the Supreme Court, but his "court-packing" plan aroused strong opposition and had to be abandoned. By the late 1930s economic recovery had slowed, but Roosevelt was increasingly concerned with the growing threat of war. In 1940 he was reelected to an unprecedented third term, defeating Wendell Willkie. He developed the lend-lease program to aid U.S. allies, especially Britain, in the early years of World War II. In 1941 he met with Winston Churchill to draft the Atlantic Charter. With U.S. entry into war, Roosevelt mobilized industry for military production and formed an alliance with Britain and the Soviet Union; he met with Churchill and Joseph Stalin to form war policy at Tehran (1943) and Yalta (1945). Despite declining health, he won reelection for a fourth term against Thomas Dewey (1944) but served only briefly before his death.

For more information on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: Jan. 30, 1882, Hyde Park, N.Y.
• Political party: Democrat
• Education: Harvard College, A.B., 1903; Columbia University Law School, 1904–7
• Military service: none
• Previous government service: New York Senate, 1911–13; assistant secretary of the navy, 1913–20; governor of New York, 1929–33
• Elected President, 1932; served, 1933–45
• Died: Apr. 12, 1945, Warm Springs, Ga.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was President during the Great Depression and World War II. He demonstrated the power of the modern Presidency to restore public confidence and win speedy passage of recovery legislation. In spite of considerable isolationist sentiment in Congress, he provided aid to Great Britain and the Soviet Union that prevented their defeat at the hands of Adolf Hitler, and after U.S. entry into World War II he led the Allied coalition to victory over Germany. Roosevelt created the New Deal coalition within the Democratic party, which dominated national politics through the 1960s.

Roosevelt was descended from a wealthy family of Dutch settlers and was a fifth cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt. He was educated by private tutors, then at the elite Groton School and at Harvard College, where he studied history and became editor of the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson. He studied law at Columbia University but did not graduate. He married his fifth cousin Eleanor Roosevelt, passed the bar, and began to practice law in New York City in 1908.

In 1910 Roosevelt won election to the state senate from rural Duchess County (a seat that no Democrat had won since the Civil War). He was appointed assistant secretary of the navy in 1913 by Woodrow Wilson and served until 1920. That year he won the Democratic Vice Presidential nomination and campaigned strenuously for the League of Nations and Treaty of Versailles, but he was defeated. The following year, while vacationing at his family retreat on Campobello Island in Canada, he came down with polio. For the rest of his life he was paralyzed below the waist, though he went through arduous rehabilitation at a spa in Warm Springs, Georgia. In 1927 Roosevelt founded the Warm Springs Foundation to treat other victims of polio.

Although he used a wheelchair and was weighed down with heavy leg braces, Roosevelt remained an important figure in New York Democratic politics. He attended his party's national conventions in 1924 and 1928, both times giving nominating speeches for the “Happy Warrior,” Al Smith. Although Smith was crushed in 1928, in part because he was a Roman Catholic, Roosevelt spoke out against religious intolerance and won the governorship of New York.

As governor, Roosevelt lowered taxes and electric rates and created a state power authority, state parks, and state highways. In 1930, in the midst of the depression, he created the first state public relief agency and the first system of unemployment insurance. He was reelected by the greatest landslide ever received by a New York gubernatorial candidate.

In 1932 Roosevelt won the Democratic nomination for President, becoming the first person ever to win a Presidential nomination after being defeated in a Vice Presidential election. He flew to Chicago and became the first Presidential nominee in U.S. history to deliver his acceptance speech in person. “I pledge you, I pledge myself,” he told the delegates, “to a New Deal for the American people.” He defeated Herbert Hoover by a landslide. Riding his political coattails, the Democrats increased their majorities in the House and Senate.

Roosevelt's 1932 election and the three that followed brought into power the New Deal coalition: white Protestant Southerners, Northern Jews and Catholics, blacks, labor union members, and small farmers. That coalition would convert the Democrats into the majority party, dominate the Presidential elections (with only two exceptions) through the 1960s, and control most of the Congresses into the 1990s.

Roosevelt continued Woodrow Wilson's transformation of the Democratic party from its Jeffersonian and Jacksonian traditions of states' rights and limited governmental regulation to an emphasis on national economic regulation and social welfare programs for the poor, the unemployed, the sick, and the elderly.

As Roosevelt took his oath of office, there were millions unemployed, farmers and home owners had seen their land or homes foreclosed, industrial production was sinking, and thousands of banks had been closed by state governors to prevent a run on their deposits. “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” Roosevelt told the American people in his inaugural address, “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” He took measures to end that fear. He declared a bank holiday to end the run on deposits, then got Congress to pass an emergency banking bill to regulate banks. Only those that were declared solvent were allowed to reopen. By executive order he took the nation off the gold standard to protect dwindling Trea-sury reserves from people who wanted to exchange dollars for gold, which they thought would be more valuable in hard times. The bank panic was over.

Roosevelt began his administration with the “hundred days” of emergency legislation. Banking deposits were guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, restoring depositor confidence. An Economy Act permitted the President to cut federal employees' salaries and veterans' pensions. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration gave states funds to provide public works jobs to the unemployed, and the Civilian Conservation Corps gave work to young people. The Home Owners Loan Corporation helped home owners avoid foreclosures. The Farm Credit Administration provided funds for farmers in the growing season; the Farm Mortgage Refinancing Act provided them with loans to make mortgage payments; and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration helped stabilize farm prices by limiting production and establishing marketing quotas. The National Industrial Recovery Act allowed industrial producers to stabilize prices and restore production. The Tennessee Valley Authority built 30 dams that provided cheap power for farms and industry and better agricultural techniques to parts of seven states in the poverty-stricken Tennessee Valley. The Works Progress Administration funded artists and writers and photographers to undertake public cultural projects such as painting murals in government buildings.

Roosevelt continued his recovery program by creating more New Deal agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate financial markets, the Federal Communications Commission to regulate telephone and radio (and later television), and the National Industrial Relations Board to regulate labor-management relations. He got the national government involved in public housing, rural electrification, public service jobs, unemployment insurance, and old-age pensions.

Although Roosevelt did not lift the nation out of the depression, his active and energetic leadership and his ability to restore public confidence helped alleviate the worst suffering. In 1936 he won a landslide victory against Republican Alf Landon, winning a greater percentage of the popular vote than in 1932.

In Roosevelt's second inaugural address he pledged to relieve the poverty of “one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.” To do so, he moved against the Supreme Court, which had declared several recovery laws unconstitutional. Roosevelt proposed to “pack” the court with an additional appointee for every justice over the age of 70—giving him six new appointments. Members of Congress, even those from his own party, were reluctant to see Roosevelt dominate the court.

Roosevelt's court-packing plan was defeated in Congress in 1937. He would later appoint enough justices to secure a firm liberal majority on the court. But after the court-packing fight, a conservative coalition of Southern Democrats and Republicans in Congress blocked most of Roosevelt's New Deal proposals.

Roosevelt maintained strict neutrality in European affairs until the summer of 1939. But after a trip to the United States by the British king and queen, he recommended that Congress amend the neutrality laws to allow nations that might go to war with the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) the right to buy supplies from the United States. After Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Roosevelt initiated a “cash and carry” policy to arm the British. The British paid cash and carried the goods away in their own ships.

In the summer of 1940 Roosevelt began a national preparedness program, had Congress give him authority to draft troops, and raised the ceiling on the national debt. In September, using an executive order to bypass the Senate's advice and consent power over treaties, Roosevelt concluded a “destroyer deal” with Great Britain: in return for providing the British with 50 old destroyers useful for submarine warfare, the United States received the use of