Biography Of Franklin Delano Roosevelt Essay Research

Biography Of Franklin Delano Roosevelt Essay, Research Paper

Biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Roosevelt was born at his family’s estate at Hyde Park, in Dutchess County, New York on January 30,1882. He was the only child of James Roosevelt and Sara Delano Roosevelt. James Roosevelt was a moderately successful businessman, with a variety of investments and a special interest in coal. He was also a conservative Democrat who was interested in politics. His home overlooking the Hudson River was comfortable without being ostentatious, and the family occupied a prominent position among the social elite of the area. Sara Delano, 26 years younger than her previously widowed husband, brought to the marriage a fortune considerably larger than that of James Roosevelt. The Delano family had prospered trading with China, and Sara herself had spent some time with her parents in Hong Kong. So, Franklin was born into a pleasant and sociable home, with loving wealthy parents.

Roosevelt’s parents sent him off to school in 1896. They selected Groton School in Massachusetts, which had a reputation as one of the finest of the exclusive private schools that prepared boys for the Ivy League colleges. Young Roosevelt was a good student, popular with his fellow students as well as with his teachers.

Roosevelt moved to New York City, where he entered the Columbia University Law School in 1904. Although he attended classes until 1907, he failed to stay on for his law degree after passing the state examinations allowing him to practice law. For the next three years he was a clerk in a prominent law firm in New York City, but the evidence is clear that he had little interest in law and little enthusiasm to be a lawyer.

Well before he finished his work at Columbia, young Franklin Roosevelt had married his distant cousin Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. They had been in love for some time and were determined to marry in spite of the opposition of Franklin’s mother. The bride’s uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt, was present at the ceremony in New York City on March 17, 1905. Five of their six children grew to maturity: Anna, James, Elliott, Franklin, Jr., and John. The chief problem faced by the young couple during the early years of their marriage was Sara Roosevelt’s possessive attitude toward her son. Eleanor’s forbearance mitigated this situation, but the problem remained for many years.

Roosevelt entered politics in 1910, when he became a candidate for the New York State Senate in a district composed of three upstate farming counties. Democratic leaders had approached young Roosevelt because of his name and local prominence—and because he might be expected to pay his own election expenses. The 28-year-old Roosevelt campaigned hard, stressing his deep personal interest in conservation and other issues of concern in an agricultural area and also his strong support of honest and efficient government. In the first good year for Democrats since the early 1890s he was narrowly elected. He was only the second Democrat to represent his district after the emergence of the Republican Party in 1856.

In the state capitol at Albany, Roosevelt gained statewide publicity as the leader of a small group of upstate Democrats who refused to follow the leadership of Tammany Hall, also known as the Tammany Society, the Democratic Party organization of New York City. In particular, they refused to vote for the rich politician William F. “Blue-Eyed Bill” Sheehan for U.S. senator. Roosevelt’s group succeeded in blocking the election of Sheehan, which infuriated Tammany Hall. The dramatic struggle drew the attention of New York voters to the tall vigorous new state senator with the magic name of Roosevelt. He soon became a dedicated social and economic reformer, and a political independent. He was reelected in 1912, in spite of a case of typhoid fever that kept him from campaigning.

Even before his reelection to the New York legislature, Roosevelt had entered the national political arena by taking part in the campaign of Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey for the Democratic nomination for president. Once again the young state senator was a member of a minority group among New York Democrats. When Wilson won at both the convention and the polls in 1912, his early supporters were rewarded, and Roosevelt became assistant secretary of the United States Navy. Roosevelt resigned his state senate seat and moved to Washington, D.C., to take over the position once occupied by his cousin Theodore Roosevelt.

Franklin Roosevelt’s years as assistant secretary, from 1913 to 1920, taught him both how to get things accomplished and, just as important for an executive, how to avoid unnecessary trouble. He had the devoted assistance of Louis Howe, who came along to the nation’s capital as Roosevelt’s assistant. Roosevelt’s superior was Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, a North Carolina editor. Daniels was a close friend and devoted follower of Nebraska editor and former Representative William Jennings Bryan, three times the Democratic candidate for president and Wilson’s secretary of state. Like Bryan, Daniels was concerned about agrarian issues and was a progressive reformer. He was also an isolationist (someone who believed that the United States should avoid alliances with other nations), who hated the idea of war. Young Roosevelt, an energetic supporter of a bigg