Second Inaugural Address Answer Key

Franklin D. Roosevelt was in his second term as governor of New York when he was elected equally the nation's 32nd president in 1932. With the state mired in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt immediately acted to restore public confidence, proclaiming a bank holiday and speaking straight to the public in a serial of radio broadcasts or "fireside chats." His aggressive slate of New Deal programs and reforms redefined the function of the federal government in the lives of Americans.

Reelected past comfortable margins in 1936, 1940 and 1944, FDR led the United States from isolationism to victory over Nazi Germany and its allies in World State of war Two. He spearheaded the successful wartime brotherhood between Britain, the Soviet Spousal relationship and the United States and helped lay the groundwork for the post-war peace organization that would go the United Nations. The just American president in history to be elected four times, Roosevelt died in part in April 1945.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's Early on Life and Career

Born on Jan 30, 1882, on a large estate near the hamlet of Hyde Park, New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the only child of his wealthy parents, James and Sara Delano Roosevelt. He was educated by private tutors and elite schools (Groton and Harvard), and early began to admire and emulate his fifth cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, elected president in 1901. While in college, Franklin fell in beloved with Theodore's niece (and his ain distant cousin), Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, and they married in 1905. The couple had a daughter, Anna Roosevelt, and four sons who survived into adulthood: James Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., Elliott Roosevelt, and Jr., John A. Roosevelt. A fifth son named Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. died in infancy.

Roosevelt attended law school at Columbia University and worked for several years equally a clerk in a Wall Street law firm. In 1910, he entered politics, winning a state senate seat equally a Democrat in the heavily Republican Dutchess County. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson named Roosevelt assistant secretary of the U.Due south. Navy. He would concord that postal service for the adjacent vii years, traveling to Europe in 1918 to tour naval bases and battlefields after the U.S. entrance into World State of war I.

FDR'southward Polio and Election equally Governor

In 1921, Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio when he was 39 years old. Unable to walk, he temporarily removed himself from public life and focused on rehabilitation at his habitation in Hyde Park, where he'd swim 3 times a week in the Astor pool, slowly regaining forcefulness. By the leap of 1922, he was able to stand again with braces. In 1924, he traveled to Warm Springs, Georgia, hoping to exist healed by the spring's mineral waters. He concluded upwards purchasing the resort and turning it into a rehabilitation center for Polio patients.

With the support of his wife and his longtime supporter, the journalist Louis Howe, Roosevelt began to render to public life, issuing statements on issues of the day and keeping up a correspondence with Democratic leaders. Eleanor Roosevelt spoke publicly throughout New York State, keeping her married man'southward reputation stiff despite his illness; she also organized the women's partitioning of the Democratic Party. In 1924, Franklin made a triumphant public advent at the Democratic National Convention to nominate New York's Governor Alfred E. Smith for president (though Smith lost the nomination and the Democrats lost the general ballot).

He nominated Smith again in 1928, this time successfully, and at Smith's urgings agreed to run for governor of New York. Smith lost to Herbert Hoover, simply Roosevelt won. Governor Roosevelt grew more liberal in his policies as New York (and the nation) sank deeper into economic depression after the stock market crash of 1929. In particular, he set up the Temporary Emergency Relief Assistants (TERA), which aimed at finding jobs for the unemployed, and by 1932 TERA was helping nearly 1 out of every 10 families in New York.

Roosevelt Enters the White Firm

Re-elected as governor in 1930, Roosevelt emerged as a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination two years afterward. He broke tradition and appeared in person in Chicago to accept the nomination, famously pledging himself to "a new deal for the American people." In the general ballot, a confident and exuberant Roosevelt triumphed by an overwhelming margin over the incumbent Hoover, who had get a symbol for many people of the ongoing Great Depression.

In addition, Democrats won sizeable majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. By the time Roosevelt was inaugurated on March four, 1933, the Depression had reached desperate levels, including 13 million unemployed. In the showtime inaugural address to be widely broadcast on the radio, Roosevelt boldly declared that "This cracking nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and prosper…[T]he only affair we have to fear is fear itself."

Roosevelt began the momentous first 100 days of his presidency by endmost all banks for several days until Congress could laissez passer reform legislation. He also began holding open press conferences and giving regular national radio addresses in which he spoke directly to the American people. The first of these "fireside chats," about the banking crunch, was circulate to a radio audition of some threescore 1000000, and would get a long fashion toward restoring public conviction and preventing harmful depository financial institution runs. After passage of the Emergency Cyberbanking Relief Human action, three out of every four banks were open up within a calendar week.

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Roosevelt and the New Deal

Other central pieces of legislation during FDR'due south beginning "Hundred Days" created some of the most of import programs and institutions of Roosevelt'southward New Deal, including the Agricultural Aligning Administration (AAA), the Public Works Administration (PWA), the Noncombatant Conservations Corps (CCC) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). In addition to programs aimed at providing economical relief for workers and farmers and creating jobs for the unemployed, Roosevelt also initiated a slate of reforms of the fiscal system, notably the cosmos of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to protect depositors' accounts and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate the stock market and preclude abuses of the kind that led to the 1929 crash.

In 1935, after the economy had begun to evidence signs of recovery, Roosevelt asked Congress to pass a new wave of reforms, known as "2d New Deal." These included the Social Security Act (which for the first time provided Americans with unemployment, disability, and pensions for sometime age) and the Works Progress Administration. The Autonomous-led Congress as well raised taxes on large corporations and wealthy individuals, a hike that was derisively known as the "soak-the-rich" tax.

Roosevelt's Reelection and "Court-Packing"

Controversial but extremely popular with voters, Roosevelt won re-election by a huge margin in 1936 over Governor Alfred Chiliad. Landon of Kansas. He faced opposition from the Supreme Court over his New Deal programs, and proposed an expansion of the court that would allow him to appoint one new justice for every sitting justice 70 or older. Afterward heated debate, Congress rejected this "court-packing" scheme, handing FDR the biggest setback of his career. Nonetheless, the Court abruptly changed management, upholding both the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act (officially the National Labor Relations Human action).

Labor unrest and some other economic downturn in 1937 hurt Roosevelt'due south approval ratings, but the crunch had largely passed by the following year. Republicans gained basis in the midterm congressional elections, however, and soon formed an brotherhood with conservative Democrats that would block further reform legislation. By the end of 1938, equally support for the New Bargain was waning, Roosevelt faced a new looming claiming, this time on the international stage.

FDR and World War 2

Every bit early as 1937, FDR warned the American public about the dangers posed past hard-line regimes in Germany, Italia and Japan, though he stopped curt of suggesting America should abandon its isolationist policy. Afterwards World War 2 bankrupt out in September 1939, however, Roosevelt called a special session of Congress in order to revise the state's existing neutrality acts and let Britain and France to purchase American arms on a "greenbacks-and-comport" basis. Germany captured French republic by the end of June 1940, and Roosevelt persuaded Congress to provide more support for Britain, now left to combat the Nazi menace on its ain. Despite the 2-term tradition for presidents in place since the fourth dimension of George Washington, Roosevelt decided to run for reelection again in 1940; he defeated Wendell L. Wilkie by near 5 one thousand thousand votes.

Roosevelt increased his support of United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland with passage of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941 and met with Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Baronial aboard a battleship anchored off Canada. In the resulting Atlantic Charter, the two leaders alleged the "Four Freedoms" on which the postal service-war globe should be founded: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want and liberty from fear.

On December 8, 1941, the day later Japan bombed the U.S. naval base of operations at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt appeared earlier a joint session of Congress, which declared war on Japan. The offset president to leave the country during wartime, Roosevelt spearheaded the alliance between countries combating the Axis, meeting ofttimes with Churchill and seeking to found friendly relations with the Soviet Union and its leader, Joseph Stalin. Meanwhile, he spoke constantly on the radio, reporting war events and rallying the American people in back up of the state of war effort (as he had for the New Deal).

Yalta Conference and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Decease

In 1944, as the tide of war turned toward the Allies, a weary and ailing Roosevelt managed to win ballot to a fourth term in the White House. The following February, he met with Churchill and Stalin in the Yalta Briefing, where Roosevelt got Stalin'southward commitment to enter the war against Japan subsequently Federal republic of germany'south impending surrender. (The Soviet leader kept that hope, but failed to honor his pledge to establish democratic governments in the eastern European nations then under Soviet control.) The "Big Three" also worked to build foundations for the post-state of war international peace organization that would get the Un.

After Roosevelt returned from Yalta, he was and so weak that he was forced to sit down while addressing Congress for the commencement time in his presidency. In early on Apr 1945, he left Washington and traveled to his cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia, where he had long before established a nonprofit foundation to assistance polio patients. Roosevelt suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and died on April 12, 1945. He was succeeded in office by his vice president, Harry Southward. Truman.