Franklin Roosevelt 3 Essay, Research Paper
Franklin 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 New Deal program. They feared his experiments, were appalled
because he had taken the Nation off the
gold standard and allowed deficits in the budget, and disliked the concessions
to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new
program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls
over banks and public utilities, and an enormous
work relief program for the unemployed.
In 1936 he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin. Feeling he was armed with a
popular mandate, he sought legislation to
enlarge the Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key New Deal measures.
Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but
a revolution in constitutional law took place. Thereafter the Government could
legally regulate the economy.
Roosevelt had pledged the United States to the “good neighbor” policy,
transforming the Monroe Doctrine from a unilateral
American manifesto into arrangements for mutual action against aggressors. He
also sought through neutrality legislation to keep
the United States out of the war in Europe, yet at the same time to strengthen
nations threatened or attacked. When France fell
and England came under siege in 1940, he began to send Great Britain all
possible aid short of actual military involvement.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt directed
organization of the Nation’s manpower
and resources for global war.
Feeling that the future peace of the world would depend upon relations between
the United States and Russia, he devoted much
thought to the planning of a United Nations, in which, he hoped, international
difficulties could be settled.
As the war drew to a close, Roosevelt’s health deteriorated, and on April 12,
1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died
of a cerebral hemorrhage.