Remembering FDR
Seventy-nine years ago today, on April 12th, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died at Warm Springs, Georgia at the age of 63. He looked much older. He died just over a month into his fourth term as President, and about four months before the end of the second world war.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd President of the United States, and held the office longer than any person before or since. A member of the Democratic Party, he won a record four elections and served from March 1933 to his death in April 1945. He was a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic depression and a world war on two continents. His program for relief, recovery and reform, known as the New Deal, involved the great expansion of the role of the federal government in the economy. He was a dominant leader of the Democratic Party who built the New Deal Coalition that united labor unions, big city machines, white ethnics, African Americans, and rural white Southerners. The Coalition realigned American politics and defined American liberalism.
Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882 to an prominent Dutch family from upstate New York. He attended the elite schools of Groton School and Harvard College. In 1905, he married his fifth cousin Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom he had six children. At their wedding, the bride was given away by another cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt. Franklin entered politics in 1910, serving in the New York State Senate, and then as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. In 1920, Roosevelt ran for vice president on a Democratic Party ticket with presidential candidate James M. Cox. The pair lost to the Republican ticket of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.
Roosevelt was stricken with polio in 1921, which cost him the use of his legs and put his political career on hold for several years. Roosevelt attempted to recover from this illness, and founded a treatment center for polio patients in Warm Springs, Georgia. After returning to political life by placing Alfred E. Smith's name into nomination at the 1924 Democratic National Convention, Roosevelt was asked by Smith to run for Governor of New York in the 1928 election. Roosevelt served as a reform governor from 1929 to 1932, and promoted the enactment of programs to combat the Great Depression that occurred during his governorship.
Roosevelt defeated incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover in November 1932, at the depth of the Great Depression. Energized by his personal victory over polio, FDR used his persistent optimism and activism to renew the national spirit. In his first hundred days in office, which began March 4, 1933, Roosevelt spearheaded major legislation and issued a profusion of executive orders that instituted the 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). He created numerous programs to support the unemployed and farmers, and to encourage labor union growth while more closely regulating business and high finance.
He won reelection by a landslide in 1936. The economy improved rapidly from 1933 to 1937, but then relapsed into a deep recession in 1937-38. The bipartisan Conservative Coalition that formed in Congress in 1937 prevented him from packing the Supreme Court (his plan to increase the number of members of the court so he could add more of his own appointees). They also blocked most of his proposals for major liberal legislation (apart from a minimum wage law), and abolished many of the relief programs when unemployment practically vanished during World War II. Some of his reforms still exist, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Social Security.
As World War II loomed after 1938, with the Japanese invasion of China and the aggression of Nazi Germany, Roosevelt gave strong diplomatic and financial support to China and to Great 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 Britain and China.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which he called a "date which will live in infamy", he made war on Japan and Germany. Assisted by his top aide Harry Hopkins, and with very strong national support, he worked closely with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in leading the Allies against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan in World War II. He supervised the mobilization of the U.S. economy to support the war effort, and also ordered the internment of 100,000 Japanese American civilians. As an active military leader, Roosevelt implemented a war strategy on two fronts that ended in the defeat of the Axis Powers and the development of the world's first nuclear bomb (commonly called the atom bomb at the time). His work also influenced the later creation of the United Nations and Bretton Woods. During the war, unemployment dropped to 2%, relief programs largely ended, and the industrial economy grew rapidly to new heights as millions of people moved to wartime factory jobs or entered military service.
Roosevelt had attended the Yalta Conference two months earlier, where he was reported to be in poor health. Lord Moran, Winston Churchill's physician, said of Roosevelt's health: "He is a very sick man. He has all the symptoms of hardening of the arteries of the brain in an advanced stage, so that I give him only a few months to live". Lord Moran was spot on in his prediction.
On March 29, 1945, Roosevelt went to Warm Springs, Georgia, a community famous for its spas. Roosevelt had a home there which was referred to as his "Little White House". He went there to rest before his anticipated appearance at the founding conference of the United Nations. It was rumored that he was considering resigning from the presidency to become the first Secretary General of the United Nations.
On the afternoon of April 12, while sitting for a portrait, 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) and Roosevelt at 3:35 pm that day, Roosevelt died.
At the time he died, Roosevelt had been sitting for a portrait painted by the artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff. That portrait is now famously known as the "Unfinished Portrait of FDR". In his later years at the White House, Roosevelt was increasingly overworked and his daughter Anna Roosevelt Boettiger had moved into the White House to provide her father support and she had been at Warm Springs with him when he died, Anna had also arranged for her father to meet with his former mistress, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd. The artist Shoumatoff, who maintained close friendships with both Roosevelt and Mercer, rushed Mercer away to avoid negative publicity and implications of infidelity.
On the morning of April 13, Roosevelt's body was placed in a flag-draped coffin and loaded onto the presidential train. After a White House funeral on April 14, Roosevelt was transported back to Hyde Park by train, guarded by four servicemen from the Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard. According to his wishes, Roosevelt was buried in the Rose Garden of the Springwood estate, the Roosevelt family home in Hyde Park on April 15. Eleanor, who died in November 1962, was buried next to him. He looked much older. He died just over a month into his fourth term as President, and about four months before the end of the second world war.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd President of the United States, and held the office longer than any person before or since. A member of the Democratic Party, he won a record four elections and served from March 1933 to his death in April 1945. He was a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic depression and a world war on two continents. His program for relief, recovery and reform, known as the New Deal, involved the great expansion of the role of the federal government in the economy. He was a dominant leader of the Democratic Party who built the New Deal Coalition that united labor unions, big city machines, white ethnics, African Americans, and rural white Southerners. The Coalition realigned American politics and defined American liberalism.
Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882 to an prominent Dutch family from upstate New York. He attended the elite schools of Groton School and Harvard College. In 1905, he married his fifth cousin Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom he had six children. At their wedding, the bride was given away by another cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt. Franklin entered politics in 1910, serving in the New York State Senate, and then as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. In 1920, Roosevelt ran for vice president on a Democratic Party ticket with presidential candidate James M. Cox. The pair lost to the Republican ticket of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.
Roosevelt was stricken with polio in 1921, which cost him the use of his legs and put his political career on hold for several years. Roosevelt attempted to recover from this illness, and founded a treatment center for polio patients in Warm Springs, Georgia. After returning to political life by placing Alfred E. Smith's name into nomination at the 1924 Democratic National Convention, Roosevelt was asked by Smith to run for Governor of New York in the 1928 election. Roosevelt served as a reform governor from 1929 to 1932, and promoted the enactment of programs to combat the Great Depression that occurred during his governorship.
Roosevelt defeated incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover in November 1932, at the depth of the Great Depression. Energized by his personal victory over polio, FDR used his persistent optimism and activism to renew the national spirit. In his first hundred days in office, which began March 4, 1933, Roosevelt spearheaded major legislation and issued a profusion of executive orders that instituted the 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). He created numerous programs to support the unemployed and farmers, and to encourage labor union growth while more closely regulating business and high finance.
He won reelection by a landslide in 1936. The economy improved rapidly from 1933 to 1937, but then relapsed into a deep recession in 1937-38. The bipartisan Conservative Coalition that formed in Congress in 1937 prevented him from packing the Supreme Court (his plan to increase the number of members of the court so he could add more of his own appointees). They also blocked most of his proposals for major liberal legislation (apart from a minimum wage law), and abolished many of the relief programs when unemployment practically vanished during World War II. Some of his reforms still exist, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Social Security.
As World War II loomed after 1938, with the Japanese invasion of China and the aggression of Nazi Germany, Roosevelt gave strong diplomatic and financial support to China and to Great 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 Britain and China.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which he called a "date which will live in infamy", he made war on Japan and Germany. Assisted by his top aide Harry Hopkins, and with very strong national support, he worked closely with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in leading the Allies against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan in World War II. He supervised the mobilization of the U.S. economy to support the war effort, and also ordered the internment of 100,000 Japanese American civilians. As an active military leader, Roosevelt implemented a war strategy on two fronts that ended in the defeat of the Axis Powers and the development of the world's first nuclear bomb (commonly called the atom bomb at the time). His work also influenced the later creation of the United Nations and Bretton Woods. During the war, unemployment dropped to 2%, relief programs largely ended, and the industrial economy grew rapidly to new heights as millions of people moved to wartime factory jobs or entered military service.
Roosevelt had attended the Yalta Conference two months earlier, where he was reported to be in poor health. Lord Moran, Winston Churchill's physician, said of Roosevelt's health: "He is a very sick man. He has all the symptoms of hardening of the arteries of the brain in an advanced stage, so that I give him only a few months to live". Lord Moran was spot on in his prediction.
On March 29, 1945, Roosevelt went to Warm Springs, Georgia, a community famous for its spas. Roosevelt had a home there which was referred to as his "Little White House". He went there to rest before his anticipated appearance at the founding conference of the United Nations. It was rumored that he was considering resigning from the presidency to become the first Secretary General of the United Nations.
On the afternoon of April 12, while sitting for a portrait, 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) and Roosevelt at 3:35 pm that day, Roosevelt died.
At the time he died, Roosevelt had been sitting for a portrait painted by the artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff. That portrait is now famously known as the "Unfinished Portrait of FDR". In his later years at the White House, Roosevelt was increasingly overworked and his daughter Anna Roosevelt Boettiger had moved into the White House to provide her father support and she had been at Warm Springs with him when he died, Anna had also arranged for her father to meet with his former mistress, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd. The artist Shoumatoff, who maintained close friendships with both Roosevelt and Mercer, rushed Mercer away to avoid negative publicity and implications of infidelity.
On the morning of April 13, Roosevelt's body was placed in a flag-draped coffin and loaded onto the presidential train. After a White House funeral on April 14, Roosevelt was transported back to Hyde Park by train, guarded by four servicemen from the Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard. According to his wishes, Roosevelt was buried in the Rose Garden of the Springwood estate, the Roosevelt family home in Hyde Park on April 15. Eleanor, who died in November 1962, was buried next to him. He looked much older. He died just over a month into his fourth term as President, and about four months before the end of the second world war.