Franklin Delano Roosevelt

BIOGRAPHY

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882) was the 32nd American president who led the United States through the Great Depression and World War II, greatly expanding the powers of the federal government through a series of programs and reforms known as the New Deal. Stricken with polio in 1921, Roosevelt spent much of his adult life in a wheelchair. A whole generation of Americans grew up knowing no other president, as Roosevelt served an unprecedented four terms in office. Roosevelt’s social programs reinvented the role of government in Americans' lives, while his presidency during World War II established the United States' leadership on the world stage.

In 1910, at age 28, Roosevelt was invited to run for the New York state senate. He ran as a Democrat in a district that had voted Republican for the past 32 years. Through hard campaigning and the help of his name, he won the seat in a Democratic landslide.

As a state senator, Roosevelt opposed elements of the Democratic political machine in New York. This won him the ire of party leaders but gained him national notoriety and valuable experience in political tactics and intrigue. During this time, he formed an alliance with Louis Howe, who would shape his political career for the next 25 years. Roosevelt was reelected to the state senate in 1912 and served as chair of the agricultural committee, passing farm and labor bills and social welfare programs.

During the 1912 National Democratic Convention, Roosevelt supported presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson and was rewarded with an appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the same job his idol, Theodore Roosevelt, had used to catapult himself to the presidency. Franklin Roosevelt was energetic and an efficient administrator. He specialized in business operations, working with Congress to get budgets approved and systems modernized, and he founded the U.S. Naval Reserve. But he was restless in the position as "second chair" to his boss, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who was less enthusiastic about supporting a large and efficient naval force.

In 1914, Franklin Roosevelt, decided to run for the U.S. Senate seat for New York. The proposition was doomed from the start, as he lacked White House support. President Wilson needed the Democratic political machine to get his social reforms passed and ensure his reelection. He could not support Franklin Roosevelt, who had made too many political enemies among New York Democrats. Roosevelt was soundly defeated in the primary election and learned a valuable lesson that national stature could not defeat a well-organized local political organization.Franklin D. Roosevelt took to Washington politics and found his career thriving as he developed personal relationships. At the 1920 Democratic Convention he accepted the nomination for vice president, as James M. Cox's running mate. The pair was soundly defeated by Republican Warren G. Harding in the general election, but the experience gave Roosevelt national exposure.

Roosevelt repaired his relationship with New York's Democratic political machine. He appeared at the 1924 and 1928 Democratic National Conventions to nominate New York governor Al Smith for president, which increased his national exposure.

In 1921 at the age of 39, Franklin D. Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio while vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada. At first refusing to accept that he was permanently paralyzed, Roosevelt tried numerous therapies and even bought the Warm Springs resort in Georgia seeking a cure. Despite his efforts, he never regained the use of his legs. He later established a foundation at Warm Springs to help others, and instituted the March of Dimes program that eventually funded an effective polio vaccine.

For a time, Franklin Roosevelt was resigned to being a victim of polio, believing his political career to be over. But his wife Eleanor and political confidante Louis Howe encouraged him to continue on. Over the next several years, Roosevelt worked to improve his physical and political image. He taught himself to walk short distances in his braces. And he was careful not to be seen in public using his wheelchair.

Early in 1940, Roosevelt had not publicly announced that he would run for an unprecedented third term as president. But privately, in the middle of World War II, with Germany's victories in Europe and Japan's growing dominance in Asia, FDR felt that only he had the experience and skills to lead America in such trying times. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Roosevelt swept aside all challengers and received the nomination. In November, 1940, he won the presidential election against Republican Wendell Willkie.

During early 1941, with war raging in Europe, Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed to have the United States' factories become an "arsenal of democracy" for the Allies—France, Britain and Russia. As Americans learned more about the war's atrocities, isolationist sentiment diminished. Roosevelt took advantage, standing firm against the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy and Japan. Bipartisan support in Congress expanded the Army and Navy and increased the flow of supplies to the Allies.

However hopes of keeping the United States out of war ended with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Within a few months after declaring war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, ordering all persons of Japanese descent to leave the West Coast. As a result, 120,000 people, many American citizens, were sent to internment camps located inland. Oddly, no such order applied to Hawaii, where one-third of the population was of Japanese descent, nor to Americans of Italian or German ancestry living in the United States. Nearly all Japanese Americans along the West Coast were forced to quit their jobs and sell their property and businesses at a tremendous loss. Their entire social order was turned upside down as families were given just days to leave their homes and neighborhoods and be transported to the internment camps.

For years prior to the war, racial prejudice towards Japanese Americans had fueled strong resentment and suspicion among whites living along the West Coast. Feeling pressure from military authorities and the public to protect the homeland from sabotage, Roosevelt felt relocation was the proper action. Though the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its legality in Hirabayashi v. United States and Korematsu v. United States, most legal scholars believe that internment was one of the most flagrant violations of civil liberties in American history. In 1988, Congress awarded restitution to survivors of the camps as compensation for the violation of their civil liberties.

During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt was a commander in chief who worked with and sometimes around his military advisers. He helped develop a strategy for defeating Germany in Europe through a series of invasions, first in North Africa in November 1942, then Sicily and Italy in 1943, followed by the D-Day invasion of Europe in 1944. At the same time, Allied forces rolled back Japan in Asia and the eastern Pacific. During this time, Roosevelt promoted the formation of the United Nations

In February, 1945, Franklin Roosevelt attended the Yalta Conference with British Prime Minister Winston Chuchill and Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin to discuss post-war reorganization. He then returned to the United States and the sanctuary of Warm Springs, Georgia. 

On the afternoon of April 12, 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and died. The stress of World War II had taken its toll on his health, and in March, 1944, hospital tests indicated he had atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease and congestive heart failure. By Roosevelt’s side at his death were two cousins, Laura Delano and Margaret Suckley, and his former mistress Lucy Mercer Rutherford (by then a widow), with whom he had maintained his relationship.

Within hours of Franklin Roosevelt's passing, Vice President Harry S. Truman was summoned to the White House where he took the oath of office. FDR's sudden death shook the American public to its roots. Though many had noticed that he looked exhausted in photographs and newsreels, no one seemed prepared for his passing.