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  1. On January 30, 1882 in Hyde Park, New York Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born.
  2. James Roosevelt,
  3. Franklin's father, was a prosperous railroad official and landowner(Lawson 25). His
  4. predecessors, when they came from
  5. the Netherlands, were succes Roosevelt learned from private tutors, not going to school
  6. until the age of fourteen. He had
  7. already studied German, Latin and French by the time he had started school(Freidel 6).
  8. Sailing, bird hunting and stamp
  9. collecting were among his hobbies. On his In 1896, at the age of fourteen his parents
  10. sent him away to Groton,
  11. Massachusetts, to a private, boys only, boarding school. He was not very popular
  12. among the students, but was
  13. respected by his peers and was never the object of pranks pulled by the ol From there,
  14. Roosevelt went on to enter
  15. Harvard in 1900. There too Roosevelt remained an average student, making it through
  16. with a C average most of the
  17. time(Hacker 19). At Harvard, his social activities took preference over his academic
  18. pursuit and the In 1903 Roosevelt
  19. graduated from Harvard and entered the Columbia Law School. He dropped out in his
  20. third year after passing the New
  21. York bar examination(Hacker 24). Soon after, Roosevelt started practicing law with a
  22. New York law firm.
  23. While still in law school, Roosevelt met Anna Eleanor Roosevelt a distant cousin, only a
  24. few years younger than
  25. him(Alsop 28). They were married on St. Patrick's day, March 17th, 1905(Freidel 13).
  26. He was twenty-three and she
  27. was twenty-one. Her fathe A few years later in 1910, Roosevelt accepted the
  28. Democratic nomination for the New York
  29. State Senate(Freidel 17). He won the elections, and in the following January he entered
  30. the Senate at the young age of
  31. twenty-eight(Freidel 18). Later in 1912 he ra In July of 1921, while vacationing at
  32. Campobello Island, he went sailing
  33. with his children. One day, they saw, what appeared to be a forest fire, on a nearby
  34. island they quickly sailed to shore to
  35. help put out the fire. It took a couple of hours and w was able to walk in the pool
  36. unaided. His disease, poliomyelitis, had
  37. affected him on land but in the water he was as quick as anyone. In 1926 he bought
  38. Warm Springs for $200,000(Hacker
  39. 40). In 1927 he contributed two-thirds of his wealth(Freidel 47) a His physical
  40. disabilities didn't hinder his climb of the
  41. political ladder. In 1928 Roosevelt ran for governor of New York and won the election
  42. with a large margin. One of his
  43. main goals was that the state should own the electric companies and other util In October
  44. of 1929, when Roosevelt was
  45. still Governor, the stock market suddenly collapsed. This caused nation-wide panic.
  46. Grain and cotton prices dropped
  47. tremendously due to an overabundant supply, and many farmers were out of jobs.
  48. Rapidly, people w Roosevelt did not
  49. run for the presidency in 1928 because that year, most of the country was in favor of a
  50. Republican candidate for
  51. president. Four years later in 1932, a week before his fiftieth birthday, Roosevelt
  52. announced his candidacy for president
  53. Through his campaign speeches he preached of a 'New Deal' for the American people,
  54. one that would lift them out of the
  55. depression. Now he was going to fulfill his promise. Roosevelt did not sit back and
  56. watch the country take itself out of a
  57. depression. uests would be permitted to reopen and those that couldn't, wouldn't. Banks
  58. that couldn't meet withdrawals
  59. requests would, together with federal aid, meet the withdrawal demands(Lawson 48). Of
  60. the nineteen thousand banks,
  61. only about twenty-four hundred Like he said in campaign speeches, If I were elected
  62. President, my first step would be
  63. to mobilize the country for war on unemployment(Woolf). This is exactly what he
  64. started to do. Another main bill passed
  65. in the hundred days was the Civilian Conserv He also signed into law one of the most
  66. important laws that today helps
  67. back up our bank system. Until that time there was no insurance to cover for banks that
  68. went bankrupt or collapsed. The
  69. Banking Act of 1933 changed all of this. The government put a He also accomplished
  70. many things which greatly boosted
  71. the economy. He reduced the 1934 federal budget by 13%. Although he often spoke
  72. that the American Navy and
  73. Marines should be the best in the world, he was not hesitant in cutting the 1934 defense
  74. bud On August 14, 1935 he
  75. signed into law the Social Security Act. This act offered protection to the needy and old
  76. through pensions and public aid,
  77. and promoted unemployment insurance.
  78. He ran again for a second term in 1936 against Alfred M. Landon of Kansas and beat
  79. him by well over eleven million of
  80. the popular vote, and won 523 out of the total 531 electoral votes, the biggest landslide
  81. since James Monroe defeated
  82. John Quincy Adams Again he ran for a third term in 1940 against Henry A. Wallace. He
  83. beat his opponent 449 to 82 in
  84. the electoral voting. He ran for last time in 1944, and won again with an easy margin.
  85. On March 30, 1945, Roosevelt returned to Warm Springs to take a rest from the
  86. presidency. On April 12 the only
  87. president in American history to serve more than two terms had died. He served his
  88. people more than twelve years and
  89. had now taken his final re
  90. <br><br><b>Bibliography</b><br><br>
  91. Alsop, Joseph, FDR, A Centenary Rememberance, The Viking Press, New York,
  92. 1982.
  93. Hacker, Jeffrey H., Franklin D. Roosevelt, Franklin Watts, New York, 1983.
  94. Freidel, Frank, A Rendezvous With Destiny, Little, Brown and Company, Boston,
  95. 1990.
  96. Lawson, Don, FDR's New Deal, Thomas Y. Crowell, New York, 1974.
  97. Woolf, S.J., Thomas Depicts the Socialist Utopia, New York Times Magazine, July 24,
  98. 1932,
  99. The New York Times Company.
  100. <br><br>
  101. Words: 958