Road to the Presidency: Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in the Hudson Valley town of Hyde Park. His parents were sixth cousins and both were from wealthy old New York families. Roosevelt grew up in an atmosphere of wealth and privilege. His mother Sara was very doting, while his father James, was rather distant. Sara was the dominant influence in Franklin's early years. As a child he made frequent trips to Europe and become conversant in German and French. He learned to ride, shoot, row, and play polo, golf and lawn tennis. He also learned to sail, and his father gave him a sailboat at the age of 16.
Roosevelt attended Groton School, an Episcopal boarding school in Massachusetts for children from wealthy families. He attended Harvard College, where he was an average student academically. Roosevelt later said of his Harvard education, "I took economics courses in college for four years, and everything I was taught was wrong." He became editor-in-chief of The Harvard Crimson daily newspaper. While he was at Harvard, his fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt, became President of the United States. Franklin Roosevelt remained a Democrat, and even campaigned for William Jennings Bryan. In mid-1902, Franklin was formally introduced to his future wife Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, who was Theodore's niece. Eleanor and Franklin were fifth cousins, once removed.At the time of their engagement, Franklin was twenty-two and Eleanor was nineteen. Franklin graduated from Harvard in 1903 with a degree in history.
Roosevelt entered Columbia Law School in 1904. He dropped out in 1907 after passing the New York State Bar exam. In 1908, he took a job with the prestigious Wall Street firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn, practicing mainly with corporate law.
On March 17, 1905, Roosevelt married Eleanor despite the his mother's disapproval. Sara Roosevelt believed her son was too young and she attempted to break the engagement. Eleanor had lost both parents by age ten, and Theodore Roosevelt gave the bride away at the wedding. The newlyweds moved into Springwood, his family's estate, where Roosevelt's mother made herself a frequent house guest. Franklin Roosevelt and his mother Sara did the planning and furnishing of a town house she had built for the young couple in New York City. She had a twin house built alongside, with connections on every floor, something Eleanor disliked. The couple had six children, the first four born in the first five years of their marriage. Their third child, named for Franklin, died of heart disease in infancy in 1909.
Roosevelt had affairs outside his marriage, including one with Eleanor's social secretary Lucy Mercer. That affair began soon after she was hired in early 1914. In September 1918, Eleanor found letters revealing the affair in Roosevelt's luggage. Franklin had considered divorcing Eleanor, but Lucy would not agree to marry a divorced man with five children. Franklin and Eleanor remained married, and FDR promised never to see Lucy again. From that point on was more of a political partnership. His mother Sara told Franklin that if he divorced his wife, it would bring scandal upon the family, and she "would not give him another dollar." Despite his promise, Franklin and Lucy maintained a formal correspondence, and began seeing each other again as president. (The Secret Service gave Lucy the code name "Mrs. Johnson." Lucy was with FDR on the day he died.)
Roosevelt's son Elliott said that his father also had a 20-year affair with his private secretary Marguerite "Missy" LeHand. His son James also stated that "there is a real possibility that a romantic relationship existed" between his father and Princess Märtha of Sweden, who resided in the White House during part of World War II.
FDR first sought political office in 1910 when he ran for the New York State Senate for the district around Hyde Park. The area was strongly Republican, having elected one Democrat since 1856. He wasn't expected to win the seat, but he surprised almost everyone and won the election. In the state senate Roosevelt became the leader of a group that opposed the Tammany Hall machine dominating the state Democratic Party. Roosevelt became a popular figure among New York Democrats. He was re-elected for a second term in the state election of 1912, and served as chairman of the Agriculture Committee. His was successful in bringing about the passage of a number of farm and labor bills. Like his famous cousin, he earned a reputation as a progressive, and supported of labor and social welfare programs for women and children.
Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1913.
Roosevelt's support of Woodrow Wilson led to his appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1913. He worked under Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. Roosevelt had read extensively on naval matters. he pressed for a large and efficient navy. As assistant secretary, Roosevelt worked to expand the Navy and founded the United States Navy Reserve. Against the opposition of older naval officers, Roosevelt personally ordered the preservation of the navy's Aviation Division. He negotiated with Congressional leaders to get budgets for his departments approved.
In 1914, Roosevelt ran for the U.S. Senate seat for New York. He was soundly defeated in the Democratic primary election for the United States Senate by Tammany Hall-backed James W. Gerard, by a margin of 3-to-1.
In March 1917, after Germany initiated its submarine warfare campaign, Roosevelt asked Wilson for permission to ready the naval fleet for war. He advocated for more submarines to combat the German submarine menace to Allied shipping and he proposed building a mine barrier across the North Sea from Norway to Scotland. In 1918, he visited Scotland, England, Wales, and France to inspect American naval facilities. Roosevelt wanted to arm the merchant marine. He asked Wilson for approval to lease the arms to the mariners and Wilson ultimately approved this by request.
During the war years, Roosevelt worked to make peace with Tammany Hall and in 1918 Tammany supported an unsuccessful attempt to persuade FDR to run for governor of New York. When World War I ended in November 1918, Roosevelt was put in charge of demobilization, even though he opposed plans to completely dismantle the Navy.
In 1919, newspapers in Newport, Rhode Island criticized Roosevelt over his handling of what came to be known as the Newport sex scandal in which undercover agents were used to solicit sex acts from sailors in a form of entrapment. It was also at this time, when Roosevelt and his wife were living in Washington, D.C. across the street from Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer, that an anarchist's bomb that exploded at Palmer's house, which Franklin and Eleanor had walked past just minutes before. Their own residence was close enough that part of the bomber's body landed on their doorstep.
At the 1920 Democratic National Convention Roosevelt was chosen by acclamation as the vice-presidential candidate on a ticket with presidential candidate Governor James M. Cox of Ohio. Roosevelt had just turned 38. The Cox-Roosevelt ticket was defeated by Republicans Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge in the presidential election by a wide margin. Roosevelt returned to New York to practice law.
In August 1921, while the Roosevelts were vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick in Canada, Roosevelt contracted polio. It left him with permanent paralysis from the waist down. For the rest of his life, Roosevelt refused to accept the nature of his disability. He tried a variety of therapies, including hydrotherapy. In 1926, he purchased a resort at Warm Springs, Georgia, where he founded a hydrotherapy center for the treatment of polio patients. This facility is still in operation as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation.
Roosevelt was able to convince people that his condition was improving, and that his political career was not at an end. He was fitted for iron braces for his hips and legs and he taught himself to walk short distances by swiveling his torso while supporting himself with a cane. In private, he used a wheelchair, but he was careful never to be seen in it in public. He usually appeared in public standing upright, supported on one side by an aide or one of his sons. He used a car with specially designed hand controls.
Roosevelt helped Alfred E. Smith win the election for governor of New York in 1922, and in 1924 supported Smith in a campaign against his cousin, Republican Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Roosevelt gave nominating speeches for Smith at the 1924 and 1928 Democratic conventions. When Smith was selected as the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1928 election, he asked Roosevelt to run for governor of New York to fill the vacancy left by him. Roosevelt was nominated by the Democrats by acclamation. Smith lost his election for the Presidency in a landslide, and was defeated in his home state. But Roosevelt was narrowly elected governor, by a one-percent margin. As governor, FDR established a number of new social programs. His advisors included Frances Perkins (who would later become the first female cabinet secretary) and Harry Hopkins.
In April 1929 a bomb was sent to Roosevelt in a package at the Albany, New York post office. A porter kicked the package, causing the fuse to sputter. The device was dropped in a pail of water where it failed to ignite.
In May 1930, Roosevelt ran for a second term as Governor. His Republican opponent was burdened with the public's criticism of the Republican Party for the Great Depression, and Roosevelt was elected to a second term by a margin of fourteen percent.
Roosevelt's popularity as a progressive governor and his strong organization earned him his party's nomination as the Democratic Party's candidate for President in 1932. Breaking with tradition of the time, Roosevelt traveled to Chicago to accept the nomination in person. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt described his challenge as "a call to arms." The election campaign was conducted amid the Great Depression. Roosevelt and the Democratic Party attracted support from the poor as well as from organized labor, ethnic minorities, city dwellers, and Southern whites, creating what would be known as the New Deal coalition.
Roosevelt denounced President Herbert Hoover's failures to restore prosperity and he criticized Hoover for amassing huge government deficits. Roosevelt campaigned on a platform of reduced government spending and trimming of waste in government. Roosevelt's message appealed to Americans struggling for a way out of the economic hopelessness they found themselves in. The election created a new majority coalition for the Democrats, made up of organized labor, northern African-Americans, and ethnic groups.
After the election, Roosevelt refused Hoover's requests for a meeting to develop a joint program to stop the downward spiral and calm investors. The economy continued its downward spiral downward until the banking system began a complete nationwide shutdown as Hoover's term ended. In February 1933, Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt. Giuseppe Zangara attempted to shoot Roosevelt, but instead, he shot and killed Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak who was sitting alongside Roosevelt.
Roosevelt would end up as the president with the longest time in office, serving until his death on April 12, 1945. He would not only confront the depression, but also the second world war. Although he is vilified by many conservatives for his creation of numerous social welfare programs, Roosevelt is consistently rated by scholars as one of the top three U.S. Presidents, along with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.
Roosevelt attended Groton School, an Episcopal boarding school in Massachusetts for children from wealthy families. He attended Harvard College, where he was an average student academically. Roosevelt later said of his Harvard education, "I took economics courses in college for four years, and everything I was taught was wrong." He became editor-in-chief of The Harvard Crimson daily newspaper. While he was at Harvard, his fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt, became President of the United States. Franklin Roosevelt remained a Democrat, and even campaigned for William Jennings Bryan. In mid-1902, Franklin was formally introduced to his future wife Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, who was Theodore's niece. Eleanor and Franklin were fifth cousins, once removed.At the time of their engagement, Franklin was twenty-two and Eleanor was nineteen. Franklin graduated from Harvard in 1903 with a degree in history.
Roosevelt entered Columbia Law School in 1904. He dropped out in 1907 after passing the New York State Bar exam. In 1908, he took a job with the prestigious Wall Street firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn, practicing mainly with corporate law.
On March 17, 1905, Roosevelt married Eleanor despite the his mother's disapproval. Sara Roosevelt believed her son was too young and she attempted to break the engagement. Eleanor had lost both parents by age ten, and Theodore Roosevelt gave the bride away at the wedding. The newlyweds moved into Springwood, his family's estate, where Roosevelt's mother made herself a frequent house guest. Franklin Roosevelt and his mother Sara did the planning and furnishing of a town house she had built for the young couple in New York City. She had a twin house built alongside, with connections on every floor, something Eleanor disliked. The couple had six children, the first four born in the first five years of their marriage. Their third child, named for Franklin, died of heart disease in infancy in 1909.
Roosevelt had affairs outside his marriage, including one with Eleanor's social secretary Lucy Mercer. That affair began soon after she was hired in early 1914. In September 1918, Eleanor found letters revealing the affair in Roosevelt's luggage. Franklin had considered divorcing Eleanor, but Lucy would not agree to marry a divorced man with five children. Franklin and Eleanor remained married, and FDR promised never to see Lucy again. From that point on was more of a political partnership. His mother Sara told Franklin that if he divorced his wife, it would bring scandal upon the family, and she "would not give him another dollar." Despite his promise, Franklin and Lucy maintained a formal correspondence, and began seeing each other again as president. (The Secret Service gave Lucy the code name "Mrs. Johnson." Lucy was with FDR on the day he died.)
Roosevelt's son Elliott said that his father also had a 20-year affair with his private secretary Marguerite "Missy" LeHand. His son James also stated that "there is a real possibility that a romantic relationship existed" between his father and Princess Märtha of Sweden, who resided in the White House during part of World War II.
FDR first sought political office in 1910 when he ran for the New York State Senate for the district around Hyde Park. The area was strongly Republican, having elected one Democrat since 1856. He wasn't expected to win the seat, but he surprised almost everyone and won the election. In the state senate Roosevelt became the leader of a group that opposed the Tammany Hall machine dominating the state Democratic Party. Roosevelt became a popular figure among New York Democrats. He was re-elected for a second term in the state election of 1912, and served as chairman of the Agriculture Committee. His was successful in bringing about the passage of a number of farm and labor bills. Like his famous cousin, he earned a reputation as a progressive, and supported of labor and social welfare programs for women and children.
Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1913.
Roosevelt's support of Woodrow Wilson led to his appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1913. He worked under Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. Roosevelt had read extensively on naval matters. he pressed for a large and efficient navy. As assistant secretary, Roosevelt worked to expand the Navy and founded the United States Navy Reserve. Against the opposition of older naval officers, Roosevelt personally ordered the preservation of the navy's Aviation Division. He negotiated with Congressional leaders to get budgets for his departments approved.
In 1914, Roosevelt ran for the U.S. Senate seat for New York. He was soundly defeated in the Democratic primary election for the United States Senate by Tammany Hall-backed James W. Gerard, by a margin of 3-to-1.
In March 1917, after Germany initiated its submarine warfare campaign, Roosevelt asked Wilson for permission to ready the naval fleet for war. He advocated for more submarines to combat the German submarine menace to Allied shipping and he proposed building a mine barrier across the North Sea from Norway to Scotland. In 1918, he visited Scotland, England, Wales, and France to inspect American naval facilities. Roosevelt wanted to arm the merchant marine. He asked Wilson for approval to lease the arms to the mariners and Wilson ultimately approved this by request.
During the war years, Roosevelt worked to make peace with Tammany Hall and in 1918 Tammany supported an unsuccessful attempt to persuade FDR to run for governor of New York. When World War I ended in November 1918, Roosevelt was put in charge of demobilization, even though he opposed plans to completely dismantle the Navy.
In 1919, newspapers in Newport, Rhode Island criticized Roosevelt over his handling of what came to be known as the Newport sex scandal in which undercover agents were used to solicit sex acts from sailors in a form of entrapment. It was also at this time, when Roosevelt and his wife were living in Washington, D.C. across the street from Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer, that an anarchist's bomb that exploded at Palmer's house, which Franklin and Eleanor had walked past just minutes before. Their own residence was close enough that part of the bomber's body landed on their doorstep.
At the 1920 Democratic National Convention Roosevelt was chosen by acclamation as the vice-presidential candidate on a ticket with presidential candidate Governor James M. Cox of Ohio. Roosevelt had just turned 38. The Cox-Roosevelt ticket was defeated by Republicans Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge in the presidential election by a wide margin. Roosevelt returned to New York to practice law.
In August 1921, while the Roosevelts were vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick in Canada, Roosevelt contracted polio. It left him with permanent paralysis from the waist down. For the rest of his life, Roosevelt refused to accept the nature of his disability. He tried a variety of therapies, including hydrotherapy. In 1926, he purchased a resort at Warm Springs, Georgia, where he founded a hydrotherapy center for the treatment of polio patients. This facility is still in operation as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation.
Roosevelt was able to convince people that his condition was improving, and that his political career was not at an end. He was fitted for iron braces for his hips and legs and he taught himself to walk short distances by swiveling his torso while supporting himself with a cane. In private, he used a wheelchair, but he was careful never to be seen in it in public. He usually appeared in public standing upright, supported on one side by an aide or one of his sons. He used a car with specially designed hand controls.
Roosevelt helped Alfred E. Smith win the election for governor of New York in 1922, and in 1924 supported Smith in a campaign against his cousin, Republican Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Roosevelt gave nominating speeches for Smith at the 1924 and 1928 Democratic conventions. When Smith was selected as the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1928 election, he asked Roosevelt to run for governor of New York to fill the vacancy left by him. Roosevelt was nominated by the Democrats by acclamation. Smith lost his election for the Presidency in a landslide, and was defeated in his home state. But Roosevelt was narrowly elected governor, by a one-percent margin. As governor, FDR established a number of new social programs. His advisors included Frances Perkins (who would later become the first female cabinet secretary) and Harry Hopkins.
In April 1929 a bomb was sent to Roosevelt in a package at the Albany, New York post office. A porter kicked the package, causing the fuse to sputter. The device was dropped in a pail of water where it failed to ignite.
In May 1930, Roosevelt ran for a second term as Governor. His Republican opponent was burdened with the public's criticism of the Republican Party for the Great Depression, and Roosevelt was elected to a second term by a margin of fourteen percent.
Roosevelt's popularity as a progressive governor and his strong organization earned him his party's nomination as the Democratic Party's candidate for President in 1932. Breaking with tradition of the time, Roosevelt traveled to Chicago to accept the nomination in person. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt described his challenge as "a call to arms." The election campaign was conducted amid the Great Depression. Roosevelt and the Democratic Party attracted support from the poor as well as from organized labor, ethnic minorities, city dwellers, and Southern whites, creating what would be known as the New Deal coalition.
Roosevelt denounced President Herbert Hoover's failures to restore prosperity and he criticized Hoover for amassing huge government deficits. Roosevelt campaigned on a platform of reduced government spending and trimming of waste in government. Roosevelt's message appealed to Americans struggling for a way out of the economic hopelessness they found themselves in. The election created a new majority coalition for the Democrats, made up of organized labor, northern African-Americans, and ethnic groups.
After the election, Roosevelt refused Hoover's requests for a meeting to develop a joint program to stop the downward spiral and calm investors. The economy continued its downward spiral downward until the banking system began a complete nationwide shutdown as Hoover's term ended. In February 1933, Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt. Giuseppe Zangara attempted to shoot Roosevelt, but instead, he shot and killed Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak who was sitting alongside Roosevelt.
Roosevelt would end up as the president with the longest time in office, serving until his death on April 12, 1945. He would not only confront the depression, but also the second world war. Although he is vilified by many conservatives for his creation of numerous social welfare programs, Roosevelt is consistently rated by scholars as one of the top three U.S. Presidents, along with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.