Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the thirty-second president of the United States. Inaugurated for his first term in 1933, President Roosevelt would be elected for a record total of four terms, though he died shortly after his fourth inauguration in 1945. His skilled leadership during two of the most challenging eras of U.S. history, the Great Depression (1929–41) and World War II (1939–45), would give him a reputation as one of the greatest U.S. presidents.

Early life

Born on January 30, 1882, to a wealthy family in Hyde Park, New York , Franklin Delano Roosevelt enjoyed the benefits of an excellent education.

First trained by personal tutors and governesses and then at the Groton School in Groton, Connecticut , Roosevelt eventually attended Harvard. His studies focused on political science, history, and English. He also devoted himself to working for the student newspaper, The Crimson, where he became managing editor. Roosevelt next enrolled in law school at Columbia University, though he passed the New York bar after only two years of study and left Columbia to work at a reputable law firm.

During his time at Harvard, Roosevelt met his distant cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), and married her in 1905. They had six children from 1906 to 1916, five of whom lived to adulthood. Eleanor Roosevelt's own political abilities and social causes would serve to strengthen her husband's ambitions for political office as well as make her, in her own right, a remarkable figure of the time.

Political career

Roosevelt began his political career in 1910 when he was elected as a Democrat to the New York state senate. Though he was a freshman, he was immediately active in the affairs of his political party, and he worked hard in 1912 on behalf of Woodrow Wilson 's (1856–1924; served 1913–21) bid for president. When Wilson won, Roosevelt was rewarded with a position as the assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy . Roosevelt was very dedicated to the position, though his opinions frequently ran counter to those of the Wilson administration, and he often angered his superiors.

Roosevelt remained assistant secretary of the navy through World War I (1914–18), but he left in 1920 when he resigned to run as the Democratic Party 's candidate for vice president. The Republican Party 's ticket of Warren G. Harding (1865–1923; served 1921–23) and Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) won. But Roosevelt used the campaign as an opportunity to establish political connections across the country, emerging as a leading member of the Democratic Party.

Roosevelt returned to New York City to practice law after the elections. In August 1921, while on vacation, he became gravely ill and was eventually diagnosed with an attack of poliomyelitis, or polio. The disease left him paralyzed from the waist down, though eventually he managed to overcome his disability enough to walk at times with leg braces and a cane or crutches. For a time, it seemed that his political career had come to a sudden halt, but by 1928 his perseverance and determination had resulted in such a recovery that the leader of the Democratic Party invited him to run for governor of New York. The race was close, but Roosevelt won.

In 1928, Roosevelt began the first of his two terms as governor of New York. A year into the term, the country experienced the stock market crash that would mark the beginning of the Great Depression. As governor, Roosevelt worked to improve both rural and urban life and to reduce the effects of the Depression through reforms such as unemployment relief, improved conditions for workers, and pensions for the elderly. New York would be the first state to provide such assistance to those in need, and Roosevelt's successful work as governor foreshadowed the great change he would bring as president.

Presidency

By 1932, President Herbert Hoover 's (1874–1964; served 1929–33) administration had failed to bring the country relief from the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt was named the Democratic candidate for president and soundly won the election. With the economic crisis at its height, Roosevelt immediately dedicated himself to the task of creating a flood of legislation aimed at relief, reform, and recovery. Roosevelt's advisors, known as the “brain trust,” worked to establish the overall domestic policy that would become known as the New Deal .

Relief measures included programs designed to assist farmers and unemployed workers who faced impossible financial challenges. Recovery measures were designed to normalize economic activity and to restore faith in the banking system. Measures aimed at reform would work to protect consumers by regulating businesses and providing assistance to the elderly and unemployed. Many of these programs were introduced during the first few months of Roosevelt's term, referred to as the Hundred Days. As the government accepted a much greater responsibility for the general welfare of its citizens and the regulation of the economy, Roosevelt restored a measure of confidence to the country.

Many of the programs that were introduced during Roosevelt's presidency lasted into the twenty-first century. Examples include the Social Security Act (providing retirement payments for workers and benefits for widows, orphans, and the needy), the National Labor Relations Act (establishing the right to choose and join unions without fear of discrimination), the U.S. Housing Act (providing federal housing projects), and the Glass-Steagall Act (establishing federally guaranteed insurance on bank deposits).

Not all of the measures enacted during the Hundred Days were popular. Many Americans, especially businesspeople, thought the New Deal's social programs resembled communism (a system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy, and goods are equally shared among the citizens). Opponents filed lawsuits to challenge the programs as unconstitutional, or in violation of the U.S. Constitution . Many of these cases made it to the U.S. Supreme Court , where the Court overturned some of the legislation. Roosevelt's frustrations over these decisions ultimately led to one of the most unpopular actions of his presidency.

Court packing plan

Because of the reforms that the New Deal introduced, Roosevelt won the 1936 election by carrying forty-eight states. Encouraged by his overwhelming victory and angered by the actions of the Supreme Court, Roosevelt instructed Attorney General Homer S. Cummings (1870–1956) to find a way to neutralize the power of the Court. What Cummings found was a forgotten proposal made in 1913 by the attorney general at the time. The proposal would have empowered the president to appoint a new judge for every federal judge that had not yet retired by the age of seventy.

The 1913 plan had not been crafted to apply to the Supreme Court. President Roosevelt, however, embraced the plan and saw no reason not to apply the idea there. With six of the nine justices (including four conservatives) on the Supreme Court over seventy, the plan would allow the president to appoint a favorable majority to the Court if the plan became law.

Presented as the Judicial Reform Act of 1937, the plan caused an instant uproar among both Republicans and Democrats, the country's two main political parties. Congress failed to support Roosevelt's proposal, which it referred to as a “court packing plan.” Just the idea of the plan, however, pressured the Supreme Court to begin to reverse some of the rulings Roosevelt had disliked. In addition, the natural retirement of older members of the Court allowed Roosevelt to appoint justices friendly to his programs, giving them greater success before the Court.

Failure of the Judicial Reform Act to pass Congress, however, had important implications for the Roosevelt administration. It marked the beginning of a period in which Congress was reluctant to enact more of Roosevelt's creative programs. Conservatives of both parties became increasingly uneasy as the proposed programs became more intrusive and imposed greater regulations on businesses. As a result of the congressional stalemate and the evolution of world events, attention was diverted from the Depression to foreign policy.

World War II

By the mid-1930s, relationships among several nations in Europe and Asia were rapidly deteriorating. The Japanese, who had attacked China in 1932, renewed aggressions in 1937. In 1938, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) of Germany began his aggressive takeovers by occupying the Rhineland (a demilitarized zone west of the Rhine River in Germany that had been established following World War I), annexing Austria, and seizing Czechoslovakia.

Roosevelt was very aware of the dangers that Hitler posed to the world. Popular opinion in the United States, however, was isolationist in nature. Still remembering the disasters of World War I, Americans preferred a policy of total noninvolvement and neutrality in European affairs.

The result of American opinion was the passage of several laws designed to avoid U.S. involvement in any wars. The Johnson Debt Default Act (1934) prohibited loans to any country that had not yet repaid debts to the United States from World War I. Since only Finland had paid its debts, this effectively eliminated the question of which nations the United States would support.

The Neutrality Act was passed in 1935 when Italy invaded Ethiopia. Originally this law only prohibited arms shipments to warring nations and travel by U.S. citizens on belligerent vessels. In 1936, Congress extended the law, adding a provision forbidding loans or credit to nations at war. As tensions increased and World War II began in September 1939, Roosevelt was helpless to act on any nation's behalf.

Eventually Roosevelt convinced Congress to make some changes in policy. The Neutrality Act of 1939 authorized the sale of arms to those nations that could pay cash and were able to transport the goods by their own means. By 1940, after Germany invaded France, Congress increased taxes and the national debt limit to enable greater defense spending.

Roosevelt finally managed to convince Congress to pass the Lend-Lease Act , which enabled the United States to “loan” resources (specifically arms) to another country with the expectation that these resources would be “returned” at a later date. Though originally intended to assist Britain under siege, the aid would soon extend to thirty-eight nations. Through this indirect means, the United States avoided entering the war but still made an important contribution to the Allies (the nations united against Germany and its supporters, known as the Axis ).

Roosevelt was elected again in 1940, though by a much narrower margin than ever before. Citizens were indicating to Roosevelt their desire not to intervene in the war in spite of events in Europe. Nine months after Roosevelt's third term began, however, the Japanese attacked the American port in Pearl Harbor , Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.

Americans were immediately drawn into the war. Roosevelt, along with British prime minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965) and Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin (1879–1953), worked tirelessly to end the aggressions of the Axis nations (Germany, Italy, and Japan). Through many meetings, these Allied leaders made strategies for the war as well as plans for the post-war world. Among the most important developments included formation of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations, organizations for handling international relations.

Death

In April 1945, after the beginning of Roosevelt's fourth term and after the Yalta conference in which Roosevelt finalized plans for his dream of the United Nations, Roosevelt traveled to his vacation home in Warm Springs, Georgia . There he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage, and he died. A funeral service was held in the White House on April 14 and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was buried in his beloved rose garden at the family estate in Hyde Park, New York.

Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; served 1945–53) inherited the presidency, from which he would carry the nation the rest of the way to victory in the Pacific at the conclusion of World War II and work to establish the formation of the United Nations, completing a dream that Roosevelt had not lived to see come true.