Franklin D. Roosevelt

On January 30, 1882, in Hyde Park, New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born into a wealthy family tied to the Hudson Valley elite. He studied at Groton School and Harvard College, entered Democratic politics in New York, and later served as assistant secretary of the navy during World War I. His recovery from polio after 1921 reshaped both his political resilience and his public image.

Roosevelt became president in 1933 amid the banking crisis and launched the New Deal through measures such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Social Security Act, and a vast expansion of federal administrative power. After Pearl Harbor in 1941, he led the United States through most of World War II and helped design the Allied coalition with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. His presidency linked domestic recovery, labor policy, and global strategy more tightly than any administration before it.

Roosevelt's work permanently changed the scope of the presidency, the welfare state, and the federal government's relationship to unemployment and old-age security. Social Security, the United Nations, and the modern expectation of activist national leadership all grew directly from the order he built.