Happy Birthday FDR
On January 30, 1882 (130 years ago today), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, was born in Hyde Park, New York. His parents were sixth cousins, and Franklin would later marry his own fifth cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt. He would be President from 1933 until his death in 1945, holding the office longer than anyone else.
Roosevelt would follow in the footsteps of his fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt by becoming Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He was nominated by the Democratic Party as the candidate for Vice-President in 1920, but he and Presidential nominee James Cox lost the election to the team of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. But Roosevelt would get his chance in 1932 as the top name on the ticket, defeating President Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt would meet two major challenges during his presidency: a great depression and a great war. FDR's optimism and activism won the voters' heart, despite the fact that he had been afflicted with polio, a paralytic illness.
In his first hundred days in office, Roosevelt spearheaded major legislation and issued a number of executive orders that instituted his New Deal, a variety of programs designed to produce relief (government jobs for the unemployed), recovery (economic growth), and reform (through regulation of Wall Street, banks and transportation). The economy improved rapidly from 1933 to 1937, but then relapsed into a deep recession. In 1937 Congress prevented his plan to get past the Supreme Court's rejection of some of his policies by increasing the size of the court and appointing his own nominees to fill those vacancies.
As World War II loomed after the Japanese invasion of China and the aggressions of Nazi Germany, FDR gave strong diplomatic and financial support to China and Britain, while remaining officially neutral. His goal was to make America the "Arsenal of Democracy" which would supply munitions to the Allies. In March 1941, Roosevelt, with Congressional approval, provided Lend-Lease aid to the countries fighting against Nazi Germany with Britain. With very strong national support he made war on Japan and Germany after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, calling it a "date which will live in infamy". He supervised the mobilization of the U.S. economy to support the Allied war effort.
As an active military leader, Roosevelt implemented an overall war strategy on two fronts that ended in the defeat of the Axis Powers and the development of the world's first atom bomb. In 1942 Roosevelt ordered the Army to inter 100,000 Japanese American civilians in camps in the inland West, away from the Pacific coast. Unemployment dropped to 2%, relief programs largely ended, and the industrial economy grew rapidly to new heights as millions of people moved to new jobs in war centers, and 16 million men and 300,000 women were drafted or volunteered for military service.
Roosevelt left the Yalta Conference on February 12, 1945, and flew to Egypt and boarded the USS Quincy. After a final meeting between Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Lord Moran, Winston Churchill's physician, commenting on Roosevelt's ill health, said that he was a dying man. On March 29, 1945, Roosevelt went to his "Little White House" at Warm Springs, Georgia to rest before his anticipated appearance at the founding conference of the United Nations. On the afternoon of April 12, Roosevelt said, "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head." He then slumped forward in his chair, unconscious, and was carried into his bedroom.
The president's attending cardiologist, Dr. Howard Bruenn, diagnosed a massive cerebral hemorrhage (stroke). At 3:35 pm that day, Roosevelt died. After Roosevelt's death an editorial by The New York Times declared, "Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House".
Roosevelt would follow in the footsteps of his fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt by becoming Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He was nominated by the Democratic Party as the candidate for Vice-President in 1920, but he and Presidential nominee James Cox lost the election to the team of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. But Roosevelt would get his chance in 1932 as the top name on the ticket, defeating President Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt would meet two major challenges during his presidency: a great depression and a great war. FDR's optimism and activism won the voters' heart, despite the fact that he had been afflicted with polio, a paralytic illness.
In his first hundred days in office, Roosevelt spearheaded major legislation and issued a number of executive orders that instituted his New Deal, a variety of programs designed to produce relief (government jobs for the unemployed), recovery (economic growth), and reform (through regulation of Wall Street, banks and transportation). The economy improved rapidly from 1933 to 1937, but then relapsed into a deep recession. In 1937 Congress prevented his plan to get past the Supreme Court's rejection of some of his policies by increasing the size of the court and appointing his own nominees to fill those vacancies.
As World War II loomed after the Japanese invasion of China and the aggressions of Nazi Germany, FDR gave strong diplomatic and financial support to China and Britain, while remaining officially neutral. His goal was to make America the "Arsenal of Democracy" which would supply munitions to the Allies. In March 1941, Roosevelt, with Congressional approval, provided Lend-Lease aid to the countries fighting against Nazi Germany with Britain. With very strong national support he made war on Japan and Germany after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, calling it a "date which will live in infamy". He supervised the mobilization of the U.S. economy to support the Allied war effort.
As an active military leader, Roosevelt implemented an overall war strategy on two fronts that ended in the defeat of the Axis Powers and the development of the world's first atom bomb. In 1942 Roosevelt ordered the Army to inter 100,000 Japanese American civilians in camps in the inland West, away from the Pacific coast. Unemployment dropped to 2%, relief programs largely ended, and the industrial economy grew rapidly to new heights as millions of people moved to new jobs in war centers, and 16 million men and 300,000 women were drafted or volunteered for military service.
Roosevelt left the Yalta Conference on February 12, 1945, and flew to Egypt and boarded the USS Quincy. After a final meeting between Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Lord Moran, Winston Churchill's physician, commenting on Roosevelt's ill health, said that he was a dying man. On March 29, 1945, Roosevelt went to his "Little White House" at Warm Springs, Georgia to rest before his anticipated appearance at the founding conference of the United Nations. On the afternoon of April 12, Roosevelt said, "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head." He then slumped forward in his chair, unconscious, and was carried into his bedroom.
The president's attending cardiologist, Dr. Howard Bruenn, diagnosed a massive cerebral hemorrhage (stroke). At 3:35 pm that day, Roosevelt died. After Roosevelt's death an editorial by The New York Times declared, "Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House".