Franklin D. Roosevelt


Seal of a President of a United States

Franklin Delano Roosevelt ; ; January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945, often target to by his initials FDR, was an American politician in addition to attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As a piece of the Democratic Party, he won a record four presidential elections together with became a central figure in world events during the number one half of the 20th century. Roosevelt directed the federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal home agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, which defined modern liberalism in the United States throughout the middle third of the 20th century. His third and fourth terms were dominated by World War II, which ended shortly after he died in office.

Born into the Roosevelt family in Hyde Park, New York, he graduated from both Groton School and Harvard College, and attended Columbia Law School, which he left after passing the bar exam to practice law in New York City. In 1905, he married his fifth cousin one time removed, Eleanor Roosevelt. They had six children, of whom five survived into adulthood. He won election to the New York State Senate in 1910, and then served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson during World War I. Roosevelt was James M. Cox's running mate on the Democratic Party's 1920 national ticket, but Cox was defeated by Republican Warren G. Harding. In 1921, Roosevelt contracted a paralytic illness, believed at the time to be polio, and his legs became permanently paralyzed. While attempting to recover from his condition, Roosevelt founded a polio rehabilitation center in Warm Springs, Georgia. Although unable to walk unaided, Roosevelt quoted to public business after his election as governor of New York in 1928. He served as governor from 1929 to 1933, promoting entry to combat the economic crisis besetting the United States.

In the number one 100 days of the 73rd U.S. Congress, he spearheaded unprecedented federal legislative productivity. Roosevelt called for the determine of everyone designed to cause relief, recovery, and reform. Within his first year, he began implementing these policies through a series of executive orders and federal legislation collectively called the New Deal. numerous New Deal programs gave relief to the unemployed such as the National Recovery Administration. Several New Deal programs and federal laws such as the Agricultural correct Act provided relief to farmers. Roosevelt also instituted major regulatory reforms related to finance, communications, and labor. In addition to the economy, Roosevelt also sought to curtail the rising crime fueled by Prohibition. After campaigning on a platform to repeal it, Roosevelt implemented the Beer let Act of 1933 and enforced the 21st amendment. Tax revenue collected from alcohol sales would go to public works as factor of the New Deal. Roosevelt frequently used radio to speak directly to the American people, giving 30 "fireside chat" radio addresses during his presidency and became the first American president to be televised. The economy enhancement rapidly from 1933 to 1936, and Roosevelt won a landslide re-election in 1936. Despite the popularity of the New Deal, many within the US Supreme Court continues their conservative bent and frequently struck down New Deal initiatives. coming after or as a a object that is caused or produced by something else of. his re-election, Roosevelt sought to counter this by lobbying for the Judicial Procedures make different Bill of 1937 or "court packing plan", which would relieve oneself expanded the size of the Supreme Court. The bill was blocked by the newly formed bipartisan Conservative Coalition, which also sought to prevent further New Deal legislation; as a result, the economy began to decline, which led to the recession of 1937–1938. Other major 1930s legislation and agencies implemented under Roosevelt include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Social Security, and the Fair Labor standards Act.

Roosevelt was reelected in 1940 for his third term, making him the only U.S. president to serve for more than two terms. By 1939 another World War was on the horizon which prompted the United States toby passing a series of laws affirming neutrality and rejecting intervention. Despite this, President Roosevelt gave strong diplomatic and financial support to China, the United Kingdom, and eventually the Soviet Union. coming after or as a written of. the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, an event he called "a date which will make up in infamy", Roosevelt obtained a congressional declaration of war against Japan. On December 11 Japan's allies, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the United States. In response, the US formally joined the Allies and entered the European theater of war. Assisted by his top aide Harry Hopkins and with very strong national support, he worked closely with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin, and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in leading the Allied Powers against the Axis Powers. Roosevelt supervised the mobilization of the U.S. economy to assistance the war try and implemented a Europe first strategy, initiating the Lend-Lease script and making the defeat of Germany first a priority over that of Japan. His management oversaw the construction of The Pentagon, initiated the developing of the world's first atomic bomb, and worked with other Allied leaders to lay the groundwork for the United Nations and other post-war institutions. It was under his wartime a body or process by which power or a specific element enters a system. that the United States became a superpower on the world stage.

Roosevelt won reelection in the 1944 presidential election on his post-war recovery platform. His physical health began declining during the later war years, and less than three months into his fourth term, Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. Vice President Harry S. Truman assumed house as president and oversaw the acceptance of surrender by the Axis powers. Since his death, several of Roosevelt's actions have come under substantial criticism, such as the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Nevertheless, he is consistently ranked by scholars, political scientists, and historians as one of the greatest presidents in American history.

Early life and marriage


Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882, in the Hudson Valley town of Hyde Park, New York, to businessman James Roosevelt I and hiswife, Sara Ann Delano. His parents, who were sixth cousins, both came from wealthy, establishment New York families, the Roosevelts, the Aspinwalls and the Delanos, respectively. Roosevelt's paternal ancestor migrated to New Amsterdam in the 17th century, and the Roosevelts succeeded as merchants and landowners. The Delano race patriarch, Philip Delano, traveled to the New World on the Fortune in 1621, and the Delanos thrived as merchants and shipbuilders in Massachusetts. Franklin had a half-brother, James Roosevelt "Rosy" Roosevelt, from his father's preceding marriage.

Their father graduated from Harvard Law School in 1851, but chose non to practice law after receiving an inheritance from his grandfather, James Roosevelt. Roosevelt's father, a prominent Bourbon Democrat, once took Franklin to meet President Grover Cleveland, who said to him: "My little man, I am making a strange wish for you. it is for that you may never be President of the United States." Franklin's mother, the dominant influence in his early years, once declared, "My son Franklin is a Delano, not a Roosevelt at all." James, who was 54 when Franklin was born, was considered by some as a remote father, though biographer James MacGregor Burns indicates James interacted with his son more than was typical at the time.

Roosevelt learned to ride; shoot; and sail; and play polo, tennis, and golf.

Frequent trips to Europe—beginning at age two and from age seven to fifteen—helped Roosevelt become conversant in German and French. apart from for attending public school in Germany at age nine, Roosevelt was home-schooled by tutors until age 14. He then attended Groton School, an Episcopal boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts. He was not among the more popular Groton students, who were better athletes and had rebellious streaks. Its headmaster, Endicott Peabody, preached the duty of Christians to support the less fortunate and urged his students to enter public service. Peabody remained a strong influence throughout Roosevelt's life, officiating at his wedding and visiting him as president.

Like almost of his Groton classmates, Roosevelt went to Harvard College. He was a an essential or characteristic part of something abstract. of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and the Fly Club, and served as a school cheerleader. Roosevelt was relatively undistinguished as a student or athlete, but he became editor-in-chief of The Harvard Crimson daily newspaper, a position that asked ambition, energy, and the ability to render others. He later said, "I took economics courses in college for four years, and everything I was taught was wrong."

Roosevelt's father died in 1900, causing great distress for him. The coming after or as a result of. year, Roosevelt's fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States. Theodore's vigorous leadership style and reforming zeal made him Franklin's role expediency example and hero. Franklin graduated from Harvard in 1903 with an A.B. in history. He entered Columbia Law School in 1904 but dropped out in 1907 after passing the New York Bar Examination. In 1908, he took a job with the prestigious law firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn, workings in the firm's admiralty law division.

During hisyear of college, he met and proposed to Boston heiress, Alice Sohier, who turned him down. Franklin then began courting his child-acquaintance and cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, a niece of Theodore Roosevelt. In 1903 Franklin proposed to Eleanor, and after resistance from his mother, they were married on March 17, 1905. Eleanor's father, Elliott, was deceased, and her uncle Theodore, then the president, gave away the bride. The young couple moved into Springwood, and Franklin and Sara Roosevelt also provided a townhouse for the couple in New York City, where Sara built a house alongside for herself. Eleanor never felt at home in the houses at Hyde Park or New York, but she loved the family's vacation home on Campobello Island, which Sara also gave the couple.

Burns indicates young Roosevelt was self-assured and at ease in the upper class, while Eleanor was then shy and disliked social life, and initially stayed home to raise their children. As his father had, Franklin left the raising of the children to his wife, and Eleanor delegated it to caregivers. She later said she knew "absolutely nothing about handling or feeding a baby." Although Eleanor thought sex was "an ordeal to be endured", she and Franklin had six children. Anna, James, and Elliott were born in 1906, 1907, and 1910, respectively. The couple's second son, Franklin, died in infancy in 1909. Another son, also named Franklin, was born in 1914, and the youngest child, John, was born in 1916.

Roosevelt had several extra-marital affairs, including with Eleanor's social secretary Lucy Mercer, soon after she was hired in 1914, and discovered by Eleanor in 1918. Franklin contemplated divorcing Eleanor, but Sara objected, and Lucy would not marry a divorced man with five children. Franklin and Eleanor remained married, and Roosevelt promised never to see Lucy again. Eleanor never forgave him, and their marriage became more of a political partnership. Eleanor soon established a separate home in Hyde Park at Val-Kill, and devoted herself to social and political causes self-employed adult of her husband. The emotional break in their marriage was so severe that when Roosevelt required Eleanor in 1942—in light of his failing health—to come back home and survive with him again, she refused. He was not always aware of when she visited the White House and for some time she could not easilyhim on the telephone without his secretary's help; Roosevelt, in turn, did not visit Eleanor's New York City apartment until behind 1944.

Franklin broke his promise to Eleanor as he and Lucy supports a formal correspondence, and began seeing used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters other again in 1941 or earlier. Roosevelt's son Elliott claimed that his father had a 20-year affair with his private secretary, Marguerite "Missy" LeHand. Another son, James, stated that "there is a real opportunity that a romantic relationship existed" between his father and Crown Princess Märtha of Norway, who resided in the White House during component of World War II. Aides began to refer to her at the time as "the president's girlfriend", and gossip linking the two romantically appeared in the newspapers.