Franklin D. Roosevelt

He grew up on a Hudson River estate as the only child of a father already 54 when he was born, tutored at home until 14, then sent to Groton and Harvard, where the sharpest thing he ran was the student newspaper. He entered Columbia Law, passed the bar in 1907 and walked away without the degree. On March 17, 1905 he married his fifth cousin once removed, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the president of the United States, her uncle Theodore, gave the bride away. From there he copied Theodore's route almost step for step: the New York State Senate in 1911, assistant secretary of the Navy from 1913, a vice-presidential nomination in 1920. That ticket lost badly, and he was 38 and finished with nothing much accomplished.

Governor of New York in 1929, president in March 1933, and then 12 years that rebuilt what the federal government was for — banks, farms, dams, pensions, unions, and a war fought across two oceans at once. He won four national elections. He died 82 days into the fourth term, with Germany still fighting. All of that is set out on BriefHistory, in order and at length. Read this page as the file the press agreed not to open.

In August 1921, at Campobello, he lost the use of his legs at 39 — polio by the diagnosis of the day, Guillain-Barre syndrome by a 2003 study. In 1926 he bought the Warm Springs spa and made it a rehabilitation center. What the public saw was staged: locked braces, a cane, a son's arm, a hip swing that read as walking. The press corps kept a convention against photographing him carried or in the chair — of tens of thousands of images, a handful show it. Eleanor found Lucy Mercer's letters in 1918 and offered a divorce. Mercer was at Warm Springs on April 12, 1945, sitting with the painter, when he said his head hurt. On February 19, 1942 he signed Executive Order 9066 and put some 112,000 people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of them citizens, behind wire.

The dime came first, issued January 30, 1946, on what would have been his 64th birthday, because he had built the March of Dimes against the disease that crippled him. Then the rebuke: the 22nd Amendment, ratified February 27, 1951, wrote his four terms into the Constitution as a thing no one may repeat. The Washington memorial opened on May 2, 1997 with Roosevelt seated under a cloak, the chair concealed as he had concealed it. In January 2001, after disability advocates raised 1.65 million dollars, a second statue went up showing it plainly. Historians have kept him in the top three of nearly every survey for 60 years. The camps are argued separately and have never been argued away.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Fireside chats speech
  About 30 radio addresses over 12 years, beginning with the banking crisis 1933
• Tennessee Valley Authority company
  Dams, power and flood control across seven states 1933
• Social Security Act law
  Old-age insurance that excluded agricultural and domestic workers, and most Black workers with them 1935
• Warm Springs Foundation company
  A polio rehabilitation center he bought with his own money and kept 1927
• Lend-Lease Act law
  Armed Britain and the Soviet Union before the United States was in the war 1941
• Executive Order 9066 law
  Authorized the removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans 1942

• March 17, 1905 aged 23 Marries Eleanor Roosevelt, with President Theodore Roosevelt giving her away
• March 1913 aged 31 Becomes assistant secretary of the Navy, the job Theodore had held
• 1918 aged ~36 Eleanor finds Lucy Mercer's letters and offers a divorce His mother threatened to cut him off. He promised to end it.
• August 1921 aged 39 Falls ill at Campobello and never walks unaided again Diagnosed as polio at the time. A 2003 study argues for Guillain-Barre syndrome.
• June 26, 1924 aged 42 Returns to public view on crutches to nominate Al Smith
• November 6, 1928 aged 46 Elected governor of New York by about 25,000 votes
• February 19, 1942 aged 60 Signs Executive Order 9066 About 112,000 people of Japanese ancestry were removed from the West Coast. Two-thirds were citizens.
• February 1945 aged 63 Meets Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, visibly failing
• April 12, 1945 aged 63 Dies at Warm Springs while sitting for a portrait

• Eleanor Roosevelt 1884–1962
  First Lady and human rights advocate who chaired the UN committee that drafted the Universal Declaration. married to
• Frances Perkins 1880–1965
  First woman in a presidential cabinet and labor secretary who helped create Social Security, minimum-wage, and workplace protections. appointed
• Huey Long 1893–1935
  Louisiana governor and senator whose Share Our Wealth program pressured New Deal policy before his assassination. rival
• Albert Einstein 1879–1955
  German-American theoretical physicist whose theory of relativity revolutionized modern physics. warned by
• J. Robert Oppenheimer 1904–1967
  Theoretical physicist who led the Manhattan Project and became known as the father of the atomic bomb. authorized the work of
• Charles Lindbergh 1902–1974
  Aviator who made the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris in 1927. opposed by