Franklin D Roosevelt Biography

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the thirty-second President of the United States (1933-45), was the only United States President to be elected for four terms. FDR, as he was called, served during the worst times in the history of the United States, including the Great Depression and World War II. Born January 30, 1882 in Hyde Park, New York, his uncle was the former President, Theodore Roosevelt. His mother, Sarah Delano, was his father’s second wife, and she could trace her ancestry back to the Plymouth Colony. As the only son of a wealthy family, Franklin first attended the prestigious Groton School, where his sense of social responsibility was formed, and then went on to Harvard. He was only an average student, but during his senior…show more content…
In the later part of her life she worked for social betterment, and she was highly regarded as a lecturer and newspaper columnist. From 1949 to 1952, she served as a United States delegate to the United Nations. Franklin Roosevelt was elected to the New York Senate in 1910. His first elected public office was State Senator from the Hudson River District. At this time, he became a Democrat, despite the fact that his Uncle Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican. Franklin D. Roosevelt supported Woodrow Wilson in 1912 presidential election. In 1913, President Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Josephus Daniels. This is where he got the reputation as an elitist and a dandy (a finely dressed man) that followed him throughout his career. In 1920 he was the Vice Presidential candidate on a ticket with James Cox. They lost to Warren G Harding. While in his thirties Roosevelt, vacationing at his summer home on Campobello Island, suffered an attack of poliomyelitis. For the rest of his life, he was unable to walk without assistance. Inspired by his own experience with the illness, he would later found the March of Dimes to raise money for research into a cure for polio, as well as a national foundation at Warm Springs, Georgia for…show more content…
But he is also highly criticized, especially for outwitting Congress and even his own Cabinet to get his programs through. He would constantly employ the use of radio and his now famous “fireside chats” to talk directly to the American people. By 1939, with the outbreak of war in Europe, Roosevelt was concentrating increasingly on foreign affairs. New Deal reform legislation diminished, and the ills of the Depression would not fully become less intense until the nation prepared for war. When Hitler attacked Poland in September 1939, Roosevelt stated that, although the nation was neutral, he did not expect America to remain inactive in the face of Nazi aggression. Accordingly, he tried to make American aid available to Britain, France, and China and to obtain an amendment of the Neutrality Acts which was very difficult to obtain. He also took measures to build up the armed forces in the face of isolationist opposition. He kept playing cards with foreign policy, finding ways to aid the Allies against the Axis Powers. He advocated preparedness. Hitler was smashing his way through Europe, one country at a time, until he finally took France. In an overt gesture that broke the United
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