Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882, in Hyde Park, New York, to James Roosevelt I and his second wife, Sara Ann Delano. His parents, who were sixth cousins, came from the wealthy Roosevelt and Delano families. They resided at Springwood, a large estate south of Hyde Park's historic center. James, "a wealthy, landed gentleman who dabbled in but usually devoted no great effort to business", was a prominent Bourbon Democrat. His mother Sara "devoted virtually all her energies to raising her only child". Franklin had a half-brother, James Roosevelt "Rosy" Roosevelt, from his father's previous marriage.

According to Alan Brinkley, the family lived "in a manner reminiscent of the English aristocracy, and Franklin grew up, therefore, in a remarkably cosseted environment, insulated from the normal experiences of most American boys". Frequent trips to Europe and Canada helped Roosevelt become conversant in German and French. Aside from a stint in public school in Germany at age nine, Roosevelt was homeschooled by tutors until age 14. He then attended Groton School, an exclusive Episcopal boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts. He was not among the more popular Groton students, who were better athletes. Its headmaster, Endicott Peabody, preached the duties of Christians and urged his students to enter public service. Peabody remained a strong influence throughout Roosevelt's life, officiating at his wedding and presiding over the church service which preceded his inauguration as president.

Like most of his Groton classmates, Roosevelt went to Harvard College. He was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity "Fly Club", though he regretted not being admitted to the Porcellian Club. Roosevelt was relatively undistinguished as a student or athlete, but he became editor-in-chief of The Harvard Crimson newspaper.

Roosevelt's father died in 1900. The following year, Roosevelt's cousin Theodore Roosevelt became US president. Theodore's vigorous leadership style and reforming zeal made him Franklin's role model. Franklin graduated from Harvard in three years in 1903 with an A.B. in history. He took graduate courses for an additional year to continue his work with the Crimson. Roosevelt entered Columbia Law School in 1904, but dropped out in 1907 after passing the bar.

While at college, Roosevelt met and proposed to the heiress Alice Ruggles Sohier, who declined. Franklin then began courting his childhood acquaintance and fifth cousin once removed, Eleanor Roosevelt, a niece of Theodore Roosevelt. In 1903, Franklin proposed to Eleanor. Despite "initial resistance" from his mother, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were married on March 17, 1905. Theodore, who was then President, gave away the bride since Eleanor's father Elliott was deceased. The young couple moved into Springwood. Franklin's mother, Sara Roosevelt, also provided a townhouse for the newlyweds in New York City, and had a house built for herself alongside that townhouse. Eleanor never felt at home in the houses at Hyde Park or New York City. However, she loved the family's vacation home on Campobello Island, also a gift from Sara.

Burns indicates that young Franklin Roosevelt was self-assured and at ease in the upper class. On the other hand, Eleanor was shy and insecure, and initially focused on her husband's career. As his father had done, Franklin left childcare to his wife, and Eleanor assigned the task to caregivers. They had six children. Their only daughter, Anna, was born in 1906. James was born in 1907. The couple's second son, Franklin, died in infancy in 1909. Elliott was born in 1910, another son named Franklin followed in 1914, and the youngest, John, was born in 1916.

Roosevelt had multiple extramarital affairs. He commenced an affair with Eleanor's social secretary, Lucy Mercer, soon after she was hired in 1914. Eleanor discovered the affair in 1918. Franklin contemplated divorcing Eleanor, but Sara objected, and Mercer would not marry a divorced man with five children. Franklin promised never to see Mercer again, but their marriage shifted to become a political partnership. Eleanor soon established a separate home in Hyde Park at Val-Kill and devoted herself to social and political causes independent of her husband. Franklin broke his promise to Eleanor regarding Lucy Mercer. He and Mercer maintained a correspondence and began seeing each other again by 1941. Roosevelt's son Elliott claimed that his father also had an affair with his private secretary, Missy LeHand.

In 1908, Roosevelt took an unsalaried position with the prestigious law firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn, later moving into the firm's admiralty law division. Roosevelt cared little for the practice of law and told friends he planned to enter politics. Despite his admiration for cousin Theodore, Franklin accepted an invitation to run for the Democratic Party in the 1910 elections for the New York State Assembly. He was a compelling candidate due to his name recognition and his family's ability to contribute to party fundraising, but his campaign ended after the Democratic incumbent, Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler, chose to seek re-election. Rather than putting his political hopes on hold, Roosevelt ran for a seat in the New York State Senate. The senate district, located in Dutchess, Columbia, and Putnam Counties, was strongly Republican. Roosevelt feared that opposition from Theodore could end his campaign, but Theodore encouraged his candidacy despite their party differences. Acting as his own campaign manager, Roosevelt traveled throughout the senate district via automobile at a time when few could afford a car. In the Democratic landslide in the 1910 United States elections, Roosevelt won a surprising victory.

Despite short legislative sessions, Roosevelt treated his new position as a full-time career. Taking his seat on January 1, 1911, Roosevelt soon became the leader of the "Insurgents" in opposition to the Tammany Hall machine that dominated the state Democratic Party. In the 1911 US Senate election, Roosevelt and nineteen other Democrats caused a prolonged deadlock by opposing the Tammany-backed candidate. This made him a well-known figure in the press. News articles and cartoons depicted "the second coming of a Roosevelt" sending "cold shivers down the spine" of Tammany Hall. Roosevelt also opposed Tammany Hall by supporting Woodrow Wilson's successful bid for the 1912 Democratic nomination. With help from journalist Louis McHenry Howe, he was re-elected in 1912. After the election, he chaired the Agriculture Committee; his work on farm and labor bills was a precursor to his later New Deal policies.

Roosevelt's support of Wilson led to his desired appointment in March 1913 as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the second-ranking official in the Navy Department after Secretary Josephus Daniels, who tended towards pacifism. Roosevelt was enthusiastic (sometimes to the point of insubordination) and "an impassioned promoter of the Navy" who "viewed himself as a vital voice for national defense". Daniels and Roosevelt instituted a merit-based promotion system and extended civilian control over the autonomous departments of the Navy. Roosevelt oversaw the Navy's civilian employees and gained valuable experience working with both union leaders and with Congress. Roosevelt sometimes lent assistance to discriminatory policies of Wilson and Daniels. In 1916, for example, he carried out an order to designate at considerable expense separate toilets for "the use of [white] women, white men and colored." The NAACP and civil rights organizations objected so strenuously that the order was rescinded without explanation a month later.

In 1914, Roosevelt ran for the seat of retiring Republican Senator Elihu Root of New York. Though he had the backing of Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo and Governor Martin H. Glynn, he faced a formidable opponent in Tammany Hall's James W. Gerard. He also was without Wilson's support, as the president needed Tammany's forces for his legislation and 1916 re-election. Roosevelt was soundly defeated in the Democratic primary. After the election, he and Tammany Hall boss Charles Francis Murphy became allies.

Roosevelt refocused on the Navy Department when World War I broke out in 1914. Though he remained publicly supportive of Wilson, Roosevelt was privately opposed to neutrality. Following the sinking of the RMS Lusitania by a German submarine, Roosevelt helped establish the US Navy Reserve and proposed the Council of National Defense. In April 1917, after Germany declared it would engage in unrestricted submarine warfare and attacked several US ships, Congress approved Wilson's call for a declaration of war on Germany.

Roosevelt requested that he be allowed to serve as a naval officer, but Wilson insisted that he continue as Assistant Secretary. For the next year, Roosevelt coordinated the naval deployment from Washington, as the Navy expanded fourfold. In the summer of 1918, Roosevelt traveled to Europe to inspect naval installations and meet with French and British officials, including King George V and prime ministers David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau. In September, on the ship voyage back to the US, he contracted pandemic influenza with complicating pneumonia, which left him unable to work for a month. After the Armistice of 11 November 1918, Daniels and Roosevelt supervised the demobilization of the Navy. Against the advice of older officers such as Admiral William S. Benson—who claimed he could not "conceive of any use the fleet will ever have for aviation"—Roosevelt argued for the preservation of the Navy's Aviation Division. He also approved the investigation that led to the Newport sex scandal, for which he was reprimanded by a 1921 congresional subcommittee.

With Wilson's presidency nearing its end, Roosevelt planned his next run for office. He approached the public-minded businessman Herbert Hoover about running for the 1920 Democratic presidential nomination, with Roosevelt as his running mate. Roosevelt's plan for Hoover to run fell through after Hoover declared his alignment with the Republican Party, but Roosevelt continued to seek the 1920 vice presidential nomination. After Governor James M. Cox of Ohio won the party's presidential nomination at the 1920 Democratic National Convention, he chose Roosevelt as his running mate. Although his nomination surprised most people, he balanced the ticket as a moderate and a prohibitionist with a famous name.

During the campaign, Cox and Roosevelt defended Wilson's presidency and the League of Nations, both of which were unpopular in 1920. Roosevelt personally supported US membership in the League, but, unlike Wilson, he favored compromising with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and other "Reservationists". Republican Warren G. Harding and his running mate Calvin Coolidge defeated the Cox–Roosevelt ticket in the presidential election by a wide margin. Roosevelt later reflected that the relationships and goodwill that he built in the 1920 campaign proved to be a major asset in his 1932 campaign. The 1920 election also saw the first public participation of Eleanor Roosevelt, who established herself as a valuable political player. After the election, Roosevelt returned to New York City, where he practiced law and served as a vice president of the Fidelity and Deposit Company.

Roosevelt sought to build support for a political comeback in the 1922 elections. However, he became ill while the Roosevelts were vacationing at Campobello Island in August 1921. He was diagnosed with polio which left him permanently paralyzed from the waist down. A 2003 study favored a diagnosis of Guillain–Barré syndrome, but historians have continued to describe his paralysis according to the initial diagnosis. Though his mother favored his retirement, Roosevelt, his wife, and Roosevelt's close friend and adviser, Louis Howe, were all determined that he continue his political career. Roosevelt laboriously taught himself to walk short distances with iron braces on his hips and legs. He was careful never to be seen using his wheelchair in public, and great care was taken to prevent any portrayal in the press that would highlight his disability.

Beginning in 1925, Roosevelt spent most of his time in the Southern US, at first on his houseboat, the Larooco. Intrigued by the potential benefits of hydrotherapy, he used most of his inheritance to establish a rehabilitation center at Warm Springs, Georgia, in 1926, assembling a staff of physical therapists who led an orthotics laboratory and later a postgraduate school. In 1938, he organized what would become the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, leading to the development of polio vaccines.

Roosevelt issued an open letter endorsing Al Smith's successful campaign in New York's 1922 gubernatorial election, which both aided Smith and showed Roosevelt's continuing relevance as a political figure. Roosevelt and Smith never fully trusted one another, but Roosevelt supported Smith's progressive policies, while Smith was happy to have Roosevelt's backing. Roosevelt gave presidential nominating speeches for Smith at the 1924 and 1928 Democratic National Conventions; the speech delivered at the 1924 convention marked a return to public life following his illness. That year, the Democrats were badly divided between an urban wing, led by Smith, and a conservative, rural wing, led by William Gibbs McAdoo. On the 103rd ballot, the nomination went to John W. Davis, a compromise candidate who suffered a landslide defeat in the 1924 presidential election.

From 1925 until 1928, Roosevelt chaired the Taconic State Park Commission, tasked with planning the Taconic State Parkway. In this role, he clashed with Robert Moses, a key Smith ally and then the president of the New York State Council of Parks. Roosevelt was unhappy with Moses diverting funds to developments on Long Island, and Moses worked to block the appointment of Howe to a salaried position with the Taconic commission. Roosevelt's contentious relationship with Moses continued as their careers progressed.

Smith, the Democratic presidential nominee in the 1928 election, asked Roosevelt to run for governor of New York in the 1928 state election. Roosevelt initially resisted, as he was reluctant to leave Warm Springs and feared a Republican landslide. Party leaders eventually convinced him only he could defeat the Republican gubernatorial nominee, New York Attorney General Albert Ottinger. While Smith lost the presidency in a landslide, Roosevelt was elected governor by less than a one-percent margin. Relations between Roosevelt and Smith suffered after he chose not to retain key Smith appointees. He and Eleanor established an understanding for the rest of his career: she would dutifully serve as the governor's wife but would also be free to pursue her own interests.

As governor, Roosevelt proposed the construction of hydroelectric power plants and addressed the ongoing farm crisis of the 1920s. He began holding "fireside chats" in which he addressed his constituents via radio, taking advantage of this medium to pressure the New York State Legislature into advancing his agenda. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 that October began the Great Depression. Roosevelt was, according to the biographer Jean Edward Smith, "among the first state governors to recognize the seriousness of the Depression"; he established the first state employment commission and became the first governor to publicly endorse the idea of unemployment insurance. In 1930, Roosevelt passed through the legislature a bill creating old-age pensions for New Yorkers.

Roosevelt was re-elected to a second term in the 1930 election. He proposed an economic relief package and the establishment of the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. Led first by Jesse I. Straus and then by Harry Hopkins, the agency assisted over one-third of New York's population between 1932 and 1938. Roosevelt supported reforestation with the Hewitt Amendment in 1931, which gave birth to New York's state forest system. Roosevelt also began an investigation into corruption in New York City among the judiciary, the police force, and organized crime, prompting the creation of the Seabury Commission. The Seabury investigations exposed an extortion ring, led many public officials to be removed from office, and made the decline of Tammany Hall inevitable.

As the 1932 presidential election approached, Roosevelt established a campaign team led by Howe and Farley, and a "brain trust" of policy advisers, primarily composed of Columbia University professors. Some were doubtful about his campaign, such as the political commentator Walter Lippmann, who observed: "He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be president." However, Roosevelt's work as governor to address the impact of the Depression in New York established him as the front-runner for the nomination. Opposing candidates included Speaker of the House John Nance Garner of Texas and Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic presidential nominee.Roosevelt entered the convention with a delegate lead due to his success in the 1932 Democratic primaries. He clinched the nomination on the fourth ballot. Garner was subsequently named his running mate. Roosevelt flew from New York to Chicago after learning that he had won the nomination, becoming the first major-party presidential nominee to accept the nomination in person. His appearance was necessary to demonstrate his vitality despite his physical disability.

In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt declared, "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people... This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms." Roosevelt promised securities regulation, tariff reduction, farm relief, government-funded public works, and other actions to address the Great Depression. Otherwise, Roosevelt's primary campaign strategy was one of caution, intent upon avoiding mistakes that would distract from Hoover's failings on the economy. Hoover's handling of the Bonus Army further damaged the incumbent's popularity, as newspapers across the country criticized the use of force to disperse assembled veterans.

Roosevelt won 57% of the popular vote and carried all but six states. His victory was enabled by the creation of the New Deal coalition: small farmers, Southern Whites, Irish Catholics, big-city political machines, labor unions, northern Black Americans (southern ones were still disfranchised), Jews, and political liberals. This coalition represented a political realignment towards the Democrats and started the "New Deal Party System" or the Fifth Party System.

President Hoover sought to convince Roosevelt to renounce much of his campaign platform and to endorse Hoover's policies. According to the historian Robert Dallek, "Roosevelt not only viewed Hoover's policies as shortsighted but considered any association with him as potentially damaging". During the transition, Roosevelt chose Howe as his chief of staff, and Farley as Postmaster General. Frances Perkins, as Secretary of Labor, became the first woman appointed to a cabinet position. William H. Woodin, a Republican industrialist close to Roosevelt, was chosen for Secretary of the Treasury, while Roosevelt chose Senator Cordell Hull as Secretary of State. Harold L. Ickes and Henry A. Wallace, two progressive Republicans, were selected for Secretary of the Interior and Secretary of Agriculture, respectively.

In February 1933, Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt while sitting in an open car in Florida. A woman hit Giuseppe Zangara with her handbag as he fired five shots toward the car with a handgun. Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was struck and killed.