Franklin D Roosevelt Dbq

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Franklin D. Roosevelt was considered to be one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century. President Roosevelt was an only child and was a cousin of Teddy Roosevelt. In 1905, Roosevelt married Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant cousin and the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt. She would become Franklin`s most influential ally and an active, beloved First Lady . The couple had six children, of whom five survived infancy. Roosevelt was a great companion to his children, especially enjoying outdoor sports with them . He attended Harvard University where he became romantically involved with his 5th cousin Eleanor Roosevelt. They married and had 5 children. Although President Roosevelt was a great president he was disabled. Franklin …show more content…

There unemployment rate was at its highest ever at this time. About 12,830,000 people are unemployed and something was needed to be done fast. During President Roosevelt’s inauguration in March 1933, Roosevelt declared in his lilting style, "Let me assert my firm belief that the only things we have to fear is, fear itself — needless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." This would be the great words that created the New Deal …show more content…

While Roosevelt's New Deal did not, in fact, end the Great Depression, it did permanently alter American society and create many of the structures that sustained prosperity following WWII . The Depression worsened in the months preceding Roosevelt's inauguration, March 4, 1933. Factory closings, farm foreclosures, and bank failures increased, while unemployment soared. Roosevelt faced the greatest crisis in American history since the Civil War. He undertook immediate actions to initiate his New Deal programs. To halt depositor panics, he closed the banks temporarily. Then he worked with a special session of Congress during the first "100 days" to pass recovery legislation which set up alphabet agencies such as the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration) to support farm prices and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) to employ young men. Other agencies assisted business and labor, insured bank deposits, regulated the stock market, subsidized home and farm mortgage payments, and aided the unemployed. These measures revived confidence in the economy. Banks reopened and direct relief saved millions from starvation. But the New Deal measures also involved government directly in areas of social and economic life as never before and resulted in greatly increased spending and unbalanced budgets which led to criticisms of Roosevelt's programs. However, the nation-at-large supported

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