Franklin Delano Roosevelt – Story of his life
Became one of world’s leaders despite his physical handicaps
FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT’S LIFE AND TIMES
Born: January 30, 1882, in Hyde Park, New York.
1891: Traveled to Germany, made bicycle tour of Black Forest.
Education: Matriculated at Groton School in 1896. Matriculated at Harvard University in 1900. Graduated from Harvard in 1904. Graduated from Columbia n 1907.
Married: Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, a fifth cousin and niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, on March 17, 1905; matriculated at Columbia University Law School.
1907: Joined legal firm of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn.
1910: Formed own law partnership of Marvin, Hooker and Roosevelt,
1911: Elected to New York State Senate.
1912: Aided presidential campaign of Woodrow Wilson.
1913: Appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Wilson.
1917: Given charge of transporting all U.S. troops to France in World War I.
1918: Went to France on U.S. destroyer to supervise naval operations from abroad.
1920: Nominated for vice presidency as running mate for James Cox; was defeated; joined Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland as vice president in charge of New York office.
1921: Stricken with infantile paralysis while vacationing at Campobello Island in North Atlantic.
1924: Took part in Democratic National Convention in New York, nominating Alfred E. Smith for presidency from wheelchair; went to Warm Springs, Georgia, when he heard of infantile paralysis cures there.
1928: Took part in Democratic National Convention at Houston, struggling to platform on crutches to again nominate Alfred E. Smith for the presidency; ran for governorship of New York with Mr. Smith’s support and was elected while Mr. Smith lost to Herbert Hoover in the presidential race.
1930: Reelected New York Governor.
1932: Announced candidacy for Democratic nomination for presidency; was nominated at convention in Chicago after split with Al Smith; conducted campaign tour throughout country; defeated Mr. Hoover.
1933: Escaped assassination at Miami, Florida, on February 15; was inaugurated as President March 4 in midst of greatest financial panic in history; brought about repeal of prohibition law, recognition of Russia, and reforms in nation’s banking structure; took nation temporarily off gold standard; established huge funds with which to subsidize employment; established “codes of fair competition” for hundreds of industries under the National Industrial Recovery Act.
1934: Called one of the greatest Presidents United States has ever had, on anniversary of inauguration.
1936: Reelected by defeating Alfred M. Landon.
1939: Appealed to world leaders for maintenance of peace.
1940: Elected to third term, defeating Wendell Willkie.
1941: Framed Atlantic Charter with Prime Minister Winston Churchill; Japanese made their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
1943: Casablanca and “unconditional surrender” conference.
1944: Toured U.S. bases in Hawaii and Alaska; elected to fourth term, defeating Thomas E. Dewey.
1945: Conferred with Mr. Churchill and Marshal Stalin.
Died: April 12, 1945, in Warm Springs, Georgia, of cerebral hemorrhage.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt surmounted a crippling malady and early political defeat to become President of the United States four times and one of the world’s most powerful leaders in peace and war.
The poor and depression-weary knew him as their provider, the champion of “the forgotten man.” But many other Americans regarded him as a hated Robin Hood who pillaged their fortunes, through taxes and restraints on business, to perpetuate himself in office.
His name became a household word all over the earth and during World War II, it was a symbol of American might and generosity.
Probably no other administration was so marked as his by political cleavages which cut frequently across party lines. It was not unusual for him to be opposed by the more conservative members of his own party while some of the more liberal Republicans were supporting him.
Broke precedent
Overwhelmingly defeated for Vice President in 1920, Mr. Roosevelt eventually became the first President to serve more than two terms.
When he ran for his third term, the reaction from his political foes was deafening. The opposition was even more vitriolic when he sought a fourth term. But he sailed into both with winning majorities.
Crippled by infantile paralysis in 1924, he spurned invalidism, projected his personality into virtually every aspect of national life, and was the most widely traveled Chief Executive the country ever had.
Although he could walk only with assistance, and spent much of his time in a wheelchair, he was one of the most dramatic men ever to enter the White House.
Mr. Roosevelt delighted in smashing precedents. He loved to surprise the people by turning up unexpectedly in strange parts of the world. He thrived on political battles seeming to enjoy them more and more as he grew older.
He was commander-in-chief of the largest armed force the United States ever mobilized which participated in the world’s greatest war.
More than any predecessor he brought the federal government into the life of every citizen. He was responsible for far-reaching social and economic reforms, and his administration spent billions where administrations before his spent in millions or even thousands.
Public debt soars
From July 1, 1933, the start of the first fiscal year after he was inaugurated, through April 5, 1944, when World War II was approaching a climax, the federal government spent $248 billion – more than twice the total of $112,300,900,000 spent by all previous administrations.
From July 1, 1933, to yesterday, the day of his death, the public debt soared from $22,538,672,560 to $235,232,077,362.
Mr. Roosevelt was protagonist in one domestic drama after another – the bank holiday, NRA, Social Security and the WPA. But the excitement and impact of these efforts to cope with stifling economic depression in the 1930s, were paled by the verve of his war leadership – dashing trips to Cairo, Tehran and Casablanca, and conferences with other world leaders almost in the shadow of enemy planes and guns.
He was born on January 30, 1882, and grew up on a 1,000-acre family estate overlooking the Hudson at Hyde Park, New York.
Joining the Democratic Party, he was elected to the New York Senate in 1910 and was reelected in 1912. He early espoused Woodrow Wilson and campaigned for his nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore in 1912. When Wilson was elected, he made young Roosevelt Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
Backed League of Nations
After World War I, he fought vigorously for the League of Nations. Though only 38, the 1920 Democratic convention picked him as James M. Cox’s vice-presidential running mate. He made more than 800 campaign speeches but he and Mr. Cox were defeated by the Republican Harding-Coolidge ticket and he began practicing law.
Four years later, while swimming at Campo Bello, Maine, during a summer vacation, he became infected with infantile paralysis.
Tall, handsome, inexhaustibly energetic, still youthful, he was paralyzed from the waist down.
For four agonizing years, he fought his affliction, supported loyally by his wife and friends, and ultimately won out. His legs were withered, but his spirit and energy flamed anew.
Just as he won this victory in 1928, the late Alfred E. Smith, whom Mr. Roosevelt had helped into the New York governorship in 1920, called him back into politics.
Mr. Roosevelt ran for governor to bolster Mr. Smith’s campaign as the Democratic candidate for President against the Republican Herbert Hoover. Mr. Smith lost New York State and the nation, but Mr. Roosevelt won the governorship by 25,000 votes. In 1930, he was reelected by 725,000 votes. With a record like that, he was the strongest candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1932.
Before the 1932 convention, the Roosevelt-Smith friendship cooled Mr. Smith, wanting the nomination again, made a futile attempt to “stop” his erstwhile protégé and disciple. In winning the nomination, Mr. Roosevelt was aided by a new political friend, James A. Farley, who later was to break with him on the third-term issue.
Flew to Chicago
Mr. Roosevelt started breaking precedents even before he became President. To show the country that his affliction could not immobilize him, he flew to Chicago to accept the nomination. That was the eve of his historic tenure in the White House.
He was never happier than when breaking a precedent. He was the first to win a third term. He was the first President to leave the country in wartime. He was the first President to fly. He roamed the world by train, battleship, auto and airplane.
In peace and in war, Mr. Roosevelt was a man of action and battle. Most of his major domestic reforms required drive to put them across and he relished his role as an active war leader, which required dangerous trips across oceans and continents to map strategy firsthand with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
Each of Mr. Roosevelt’s terms was filled with drama. His first, starting in 1933, saw his fight for the “forgotten man” and it succeeded to a great extent in bringing the nation out of a deadening economic depression.
Supreme Court battle
His second term began with the Supreme Court battle in 1937 – in which he tried unsuccessfully to increase the membership of the court after it had declared several New Deal laws unconstitutional. Less than a year after he started his third term in 1941, the nation was plunged into war.
The final two years of his second term were the basic period of transition from peace to war.
In 1939 and 1940, menacing and spreading wars in Europe and Asia forced him to subordinate the social objectives of the New Deal to a simultaneous effort to maintain American neutrality, prepare for the eventuality of war, and help the peaceable nations that had already been set upon by the aggressors – Germany, Italy and Japan.
The Germans went into Poland in the fall of 1939 after the President had made fruitless appeals to Germany and Italy “to find a peaceful and constructive solution of existing controversies.”
Great Britain and France declared war September 3, 1939, and a titanic world struggle was on. France fell and the Germans and Italians took over most of Europe by force of arms.
The isolationists in this country charged Mr. Roosevelt was leading the country into the war by sending aid to Britain. It was 1940 – and his supporters said it was no time to change leadership and he was elected to his third term, defeating Wendell L. Willkie, the Republican nominee, by a popular vote of 27,243,466 to 22,304,755.
First peacetime draft
In the spring of 1940, he had enacted the nation’s first peacetime conscription act, and in October, millions registered with thousands of local draft boards throughout the country.
After the election, Mr. Roosevelt traded 50 World War I destroyers to Great Britain, which urgently needed them in the Battle of the Atlantic against German U-boats, for 99-year leases on British-owned sites for defensive military bases in the Western Hemisphere.
In the spring of 1941, Congress authorized the administration-proposed Lend-Lease program which, before this country was brought into the war, helped to keep Great Britain and Russia fighting effectively against a then-superior Axis enemy.
This first year of Mr. Roosevelt’s third term was spent largely in marshaling American production and building up the Army and Navy. It was in this “darkness-before-dawn” era when the government was preparing for war while trying to stay out of it, that Mr. Roosevelt created the largest federal establishment in history.
Industrial leaders were drafted to head up a gigantic producing program. The President began delegating his powers so as to have more freedom to plot this country’s international course.
Mr. Roosevelt held his Atlantic Charter conference with Mr. Churchill off the coast of Newfoundland in August 1941.
Eight-point charter
On the British battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the American cruiser USS Augusta, Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Churchill and their ranking staff chiefs composed the brief Charter, an eight-point declaration of policy which was the foundation for the organization of the United Nations.
The “day of infamy” that plunged the United States into war came on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pear Harbor. Germany and Italy then joined Japan in openly declaring war against the United States.
The President asked and received war declarations from Congress against Japan, Germany and Italy within 48 hours.
Mr. Churchill rushed to Washington, arriving on December 22, and remaining until mid-January. The United Nations declaration was drafted and signed.
Mr. Churchill made another trip to Washington in June 1942, shortly after Mr. Roosevelt had received Soviet Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov in the White House.
The Anglo-American staff chiefs reported that a lowland European invasion was impractical for the time being, and the decision was made to go into North Africa.
The African invasion began in November 1942, and shortly after the New Year, Mr. Roosevelt flew to Casablanca, which was then within fighter plane range of the Germans, to meet again with Mr. Churchill. From that meeting came the Roosevelt-Churchill pledge to accept nothing but the unconditional surrender of the Axis.
Met again in Quebec
At Casablanca, the High Command of the American and British armed forces decided to intensify the Mediterranean offensive. Allied armies took Sicily, invaded Italy, and during the summer of 1943, Italy surrendered.
Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill got together again in August 1943 in Quebec and later in Washington, and made plans to meet again in Cario and Tehran with Premier Stalin and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
From those four-power conferences held during November and December came the decision to invade Western Europe in the spring of 1944 and Dwight D. Eisenhower, the American who commanded the invasion of French Africa, was named Allied commander-in-chief.
Mr. Roosevelt came home and found the Congress, which had become more Republican in the midterm election, in growing revolt against his domestic policies. There were many complaints against restrictions on wages and prices. The President twice vetoed attempts by Congress to abolish anti-inflation food subsidies.
The demand of the armed services for more than 11 million men by mid-1944 complicated an already existing manpower problem and mounting government expenditures pointed to the pressing need for new revenue.
Battle over tax veto
Congress was reluctant to impose new taxes. Early in 1944, objecting to the veto of a tax bill which the administration considered insufficient, Senate Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley, one of his oldest friends, resigned as Democratic leader of the Senate and was promptly reelected by his colleagues.
Congress as promptly enacted the tax measure over the veto. But later, Mr. Barkley supported the President for a fourth term.
Mr. Roosevelt fell ill in late 1943 just after he got back from Tehran. Physically and mentally tired, he was an easy victim for colds and sinus and bronchial irritations which continued to affect him during the first months of 1944.
His doctor, Vice Adm. Ross T. McIntire, in late March 1944, put him through a painstaking physical examination and wrote this prescription: sun, salt air, and complete rest.
The prescription was filled at Hobcaw Barony, Bernard M. Baruch’s 23,000-acre South Carolina estate, from April 9 to May 7.
When he came back to Washington, before him lay his big personal decision for 1944: Whether to seek reelection.
He followed his pre-third term policy of saying nothing. But enough Democratic convention delegates were already pledged to assure his nomination.
Invasion of France
Before the 1944 political season blossomed fully, the country forgot, for a time at least, about forthcoming political conventions and concentrated on the invasion of France which began June 6.
The President continued to play his game of saying nothing – even after the Republicans gave their presidential nomination to Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York, late in June.
Finally, about a week before the Democratic convention in July, Mr. Roosevelt informed Robert E. Hannegan, the national Democratic chairman, that he would accept nomination for a fourth term, but would not run for office “in the usual partisan, political sense.”
He accepted the nomination July 20 in a radio speech from the U.S. Marine base at San Diego, telling the nation that while he would not campaign in “the usual sense,” he would “feel free to report to the people the facts about matters of concern to them and especially to correct any misrepresentations.”
Then the President, always a great showman, emphasized his role as wartime Commander-in-Chief by sailing out into the Pacific, and conferring with Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz and other Pacific war leaders at Pearl Harbor.
Visited Aleutian Islands
He came home via the Aleutian Islands and a few minutes after arriving at Bremerton, Washington, reported to the people by radio, stressing the need for a fence of island bases around Japan to prevent aggression until the Japanese proved their ability to live as a neighbor to other nations.
Mr. Roosevelt then went back to Washington and watched Mr. Dewey build his campaign. Mr. Dewey made a long swing from the East to the West Coast and back again, speaking frequently.
But the President bided his time. At last, on September 23, he opened his campaign with an avowedly political speech in which he accused the Republicans of irresponsibility, fraud, “callous and brazen” falsehoods and an “ostrich” attitude in foreign affairs.
Mr. Roosevelt waited until late October, however, to campaign in earnest. Then he made rapid swings through New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston. He stood on his record, particularly the war achievement, and on November 7, was reelected by approximately 25,500,000 popular votes to 23,000,000 for Mr. Dewey. His electoral vote margin was a landslide – 432 to 99.
