Franklin D. Roosevelt is Elected to Fourth Term

On November 7, 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected to his fourth term. The 32nd President of the United States led the country through the Great Depression and most of World War II. He was especially known for the New Deal, a program for "relief, recovery, and reform."

Born in 1882 to a prominent family of Dutch decent in New York, he attended the best schools and graduated from Harvard. In 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of Theodore Roosevelt, and they had six children. In 1910, he began his political career, serving in the New York State Senate and then as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. In 1920, he ran for vice president with James Cox, but they lost to Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. 

In 1921, he was struck with polio and lost the use of his legs. He tried hard to recover from the disease and founded the treatment center in Warm Springs, Georgia. Although his political career seemed in doubt, he successfully ran for Governor of New York in 1928, where he came up with some of his ideas to combat the depression. After being elected to his first term as president in 1932, he won in a landslide in 1936 against Alf Landon. He was reelected again in 1940 and 1944 and had just begun his fourth term when his declining health caught up with him, and he died from a massive stroke on April 12, 1945. The Twenty-Second Amendment, which stated that no person shall be elected as President more than twice, was ratified in 1951.

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