Franklin roosevelt
Franklin rooseveltFranklin Roosevelt
Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression,
Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people
regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous
action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, "the
only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Born in 1882 at Hyde Park, New York--now a national historic site--he attended
Harvard University and Columbia Law
School. On St. Patrick's Day, 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt.
Following the example of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, whom he
greatly admired, Franklin D. Roosevelt
entered public service through politics, but as a Democrat. He won election to
the New York Senate in 1910. President Wilson
appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he was the Democratic nominee
for Vice President in 1920.
In the summer of 1921, when he was 39, disaster hit-h-e was stricken with
poliomyelitis. Demonstrating indomitable courage,
he fought to regain the use of his legs, particularly through swimming. At the
1924 Democratic Convention he dramatically
appeared on crutches to nominate Alfred E. Smith as "the Happy Warrior." In 1928
Roosevelt became Governor of New
York.
He was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March
there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and
almost every bank was closed. In his first "hundred days," he proposed, and
Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring
recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in
danger of losing farms and homes, and reform,
especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but businessmen and
bankers were turning more and more
against Roosevelt's...
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