Roosevelt, Franklin Delano

Early Life and Political Career

Born in 1882 in Hyde Park, New York, to a family of privilege, Franklin D. Roosevelt attended Groton School and Harvard College before studying law at Columbia University Law School. In 1905 he married Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant cousin, who would play a pivotal role in his political career, especially as First Lady. Although FDR worked briefly for a Manhattan law firm, he soon embarked on a political career with his election to the New York State Senate in 1910. In 1913, Roosevelt followed the path of his cousin Theodore Roosevelt when Pres. Woodrow Wilson appointed him assistant secretary of the Navy. Serving under Naval Secretary Josephus Daniels, FDR gained experience in the area of naval administration and managing labor relations in U.S. Navy yards. After America's entry into World War I in 1917, Roosevelt contemplated enlisting in the military, but Daniels and Wilson discouraged him.

As vice presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in 1920, FDR embraced Wilsonian internationalism and supported American membership in the League of Nations. Defeated resoundingly by Republican Warren G. Harding, Roosevelt returned to New York. In 1921, Roosevelt experienced a loss of mobility of his legs as a result of an attack of infantile paralysis (polio). Elected in 1928 as governor of New York state, Roosevelt won the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1932 and decisively defeated President Herbert Hoover in his bid for reelection.

Grappling with the Depression was the dominant focus of Roosevelt's first term in office. Although federal spending increased dramatically in his first term, FDR continued his predecessor's policy of maintaining a small regular Army. Roosevelt placed one relief agency, the Civilian Conservation Corps, under the control of the U.S. Army. Roosevelt did increase naval expenditures in his first term in office and took an active interest in naval affairs. Like Hoover and Calvin Coolidge, Roosevelt opposed granting veterans of World War I an early payment of their bonuses.

While campaigning, Roosevelt had abandoned his earlier public support of American membership in the League of Nations, but once elected he did try unsuccessfully to get the Senate to ratify American participation in the World Court in 1935. His policy regarding the Far East was a continuation of Hoover's and Secretary of State Henry Stimson's policy of nonrecognition of the Japanese conquest of Manchuria. Although Roosevelt did establish diplomatic [Page 745]relations with the Soviet Union in 1933, he launched few substantive diplomatic initiatives in Europe. He also supported a series of neutrality laws that restricted American trade with combatants and prohibited Americans from traveling on the vessels of belligerent nations. FDR established the Good Neighbor Policy that publicly proclaimed an end to the unilateral right of the United States to use the American military to intervene in the affairs of Latin American countries (with the exception of Cuba in 1934).

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