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Franklin Delano Roosevelt
32nd President 1933-1945
"I think it is time for us Democrats to claim Lincoln as one of our own," wrote Franklin Roosevelt, then governor of New York, in 1929. Lincoln was "a many-sided man... emancipator -- not slaves alone, but of those of heavy heart everywhere."
Roosevelt visited the Lincoln Memorial on every February 12 -- Lincoln's birthday -- that he was in Washington. He read Carl Sandburg's epic biographies of Lincoln. In the eve of World War II, evaluating Lincoln's team of rivals, the Democratic president invited Republicans to join his Cabinet. On a darker note, Roosevelt's wartime imprisonment of over 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent prompted comparisons with Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus. Like Lincoln, Roosevelt died before he could grapple with the challenges of a postwar world.
Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt arrive at the Lincoln Memorial for Lincoln's birthday celebration, February 12, 1938. |