President FD Roosevelt's museum-library

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) was born in Hyde Park N.Y, son of James and Sara Delano Roosevelt. He att­ended Groton Pre­parat­ory School Mass, and received a BA from Harv­ard. Then he next studied law at Col­um­­bia Uni NY. In 1905 he marr­ied a distant cousin El­eanor Roo­s­­e­velt, niece of Pres Theodore Roos­evelt and had 6 chil­d­ren. When he pas­sed the bar exam­in­at­­ion in 1907, he practiced law with a major NY law firm. He entered politics in 1910, el­ected to the NY State Sen­ate as a Democrat in 1912.

FDR’s Library at Springwood 

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Woodrow Wilson appointed Franklin Ass Sec of Navy in 1913, a position he held until 1920. He successfully specialised in naval admin­istration, res­ul­ting in his being nomin­at­ed for Vice-Pres by the Demo­cr­at­s in 1920. However objections to Wil­son's plan for US’s partic­ipation in the League of Nations made Republican Warren Hard­ing President.

While holidaying in New Brunswick in mid 1921, Roose­velt con­t­racted polio and could never use his legs again. He established a foundat­ion at Warm Springs Georgia to help other polio victims, and dir­ect­ed the March of Dimes project that funded an eff­ect­ive vaccine.

The Roosevelts resumed his political career. In 1928 NY Gov Alfred Smith became Democrats’ pres­id­en­tial can­didate and arranged for Roosevelt's nomination to succ­eed him as NY governor. Smith lost to Herbert Hoover but Roos­evelt was elected governor anyhow. By 1930, Roosevelt began campaigning for himself. While the Depress­ion harm­ed Hoover and the Re­p­­ub­lic­ans, Roosevelt's heroic efforts to combat it in N.Y enhan­ced his reput­ation. In 1932 he stood as the Democr­atic presidential can­d­id­ate, calling for government work­ing on the eco­nomy to provide relief and reform. He easily beat Hoover in 1932.

Roosevelt and Churchill aboard the HMS Prince of Wales

Roosevelt Library and Museum Blog

The Depression worsened before Roosevelt's inauguration in Mar 1933. Factories shutting, farm closures and bank failures incr­eas­ed, while unemp­loyment soared. Roosevelt, who faced the gr­eatest crisis in American history since the Civil War, im­med­iately init­iated his New Deal programmes. He wor­ked with a special ses­sion of Congress during the First 100 Days to pass rec­overy legisl­ation which established agencies eg the Agricultural Adjust­ment Administ­ration to support farm pr­ic­es and the Civilian Conserv­ation Corps to employ young men. Other agencies assisted busin­ess and labour, insured bank deposits, regulated the stock market, subsidised home and farm mortgages, reviving confidence in the economy. Dir­ect relief saved millions from starv­at­ion.

Note that the New Deal mea­sures directly involved government in ar­eas of social and economic life as never before and resulted in incr­eased spending and unbalanced budgets. This led of course to right-wing criticisms of Roos­ev­elt's prog­ram­m­es, but working families and farmers supported Roosevelt, and elected addit­ional Democrats to state legislatures. More New Deal legislation followed in 1935 including the establishment of Works Projects Administration, providing jobs for labourers, artists, writers, musicians and authors. And the Social Security Act which provided unemploy­ment compensation, and old-age benefits.

Roosevelt easily defeated his opponents in 1936, 1940 and 1944, becoming the only American President to serve more than 2 terms. Roosevelt took on the crit­ics of the New Deal, namely the Supreme Court which had declared various legislation unconst­itut­ional. He proposed to add new justices to the Supreme Court in 1937 but crit­ics said he was packing the Court and undermining the sepa­r­­at­ion of powers. His proposal was defeated! This setback, coupled with the new Recession that occurred in his second term, was his nadir.

By 1939 when WW2 erupted FDR con­cen­trated on foreign af­f­airs. New Deal reform legis­lat­ion reduced, and Depres­s­ion crises didn’t fully abate until the nation mobilised for war. When Germany invaded Poland in Sept 1939, although the U.S was neu­t­ral, Roosev­elt did not ex­p­ect them to rem­ain totally inactive ag­ainst Nazi ag­gression. Thus he tried to make Am­er­ican aid available to Britain, France and Ch­ina, and to get an amendment of the US Neutrality Acts. And he tried to build the military, despite isolat­ion­ist opposition

With France’s fall in 1940, Roosevelt's pol­icy changed quickly. Con­­gress enacted legislation for military conscription and Roos­ev­elt signed a Lend-Lease Bill in Mar 1941 to enable the nation to furnish aid to nations fighting the Axis Powers. Though neutral re the war and still at peace, U.S was becoming the centre of prepar­ed­ness as its factories were producing like they did pre-Depression.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in Dec 1941 was foll­owed by Ger­­m­any's and Italy's declarations of war ag­ainst US, inevitably bringing U.S into the war. Roos­evelt exercised his powers as Comm­an­d­er of the Armed Forc­es, making his Day of Infamy Speech in Cong­ress and asking for a formal decl­ar­ation of war.

He co-created a Grand Alliance against Axis powers in The United Nations Dec­l­­aration, Jan 1942, in which all nat­ions fig­hting the Axis powers agreed not to make a separate peace and pl­ed­ged a peace organisation on victory. He gave priority to the west­ern European front and had his Chief of Staff plan for the Pacific; they org­an­ised an expeditionary for­ce for an invasion of Eur­ope. The Allies invaded North Africa in Nov 1942, Sicily and Italy in 1943. D-Day landings on Norm­andy beaches June 1944 were fol­l­owed by Allied invasions of Ger­many and by 1945 victory over Europe.

The endless strain exhausted Roosevelt and by 1944, heart and circul­at­ory problems appeared. And although he was on a st­rict medical regime, he suffered a massive stroke and died aged 63. He was buried in his Hyde Park estate, just before complete mil­itary victory in Eur­ope and some months before victory over Japan.

FDR Presidential Library and Museum built in 1940 and opened in 1941

with his statue in the centre front

As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt considered the future of his vast document collections in 1940, he believed they should belong to the people. So he created the first ever Presidential Library next to his home in Hyde Park. Today, the FDR Presidential Library and Museum is a very fine historic sites in NY, now a collect­­ion of 34,000+ items.

Black Americans, Civil Rights and the Roosevelts 1932-62 is an exh­ib­ition that will be open until the end of 2024. It centres on the histor­ical voices of many Black community leaders, wartime service­men and cit­izens who engaged the Roosevelt administration dir­ect­ly, examining the President’s politics re rac­ial justice. And new ex­hib­its tell the story of the Roosevelt Pres­id­ency from the Great De­pression and New Deal to WW2. The Map Room recreates FDR’s secret White House Map Room where the walls featured projections of maps of key bat­t­les.

By the time he was Presid­ent, Roosevelt had amassed one of the nat­ion's finest collections of naval art, Hudson River Valley art, and hist­orical photos. In the New Deal years, he collected exam­p­les of art and crafts work produced by Works Progress Administ­ra­t­ion.