#roosevelt80days

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Day 79 - FDR's Secretaries of State

Franklin D. Roosevelt had two Secretaries of State during his 12 year presidency. The first was Cordell Hull, who served for eleven years. A longtime Senator from Tennessee, Hull was very popular within Democratic Party ranks and among the American people, but his influence was actually less than many at the time believed. Because the President preferred to handle foreign affairs himself or through select advisors, FDR treated Hull much like a figurehead. Despite having his authority frequently bypassed, in the 1930s Hull played a central role in international tariff reduction and helped implement the Good Neighbor Policy toward Latin America. In the 1940s he advocated for neutrality in the face of impending war but was often excluded from wartime decision making.  However, Hull made great contributions in the crafting of the post-war United Nations organization and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945. When Hull retired in 1944, Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., was named to replace him. Early in his career, Stettinius had earned a reputation as an innovative businessman with a social conscience while chairman of the board of U.S. Steel.  After serving on the Industrial Advisory Board for the National Recovery Administration, numerous positions related to war production and industrial priorities, and administrator of Lend-Lease, Stettinius was appointed in 1943 as an Undersecretary of State where he directed the department’s long-term postwar planning.  His main contribution as Secretary of State was to lay the foundation for the United Nations organization by negotiating difficult procedural questions and reassuring reluctant nations. After FDR’s death in April 1945, President Truman kept Stettinius in office for the duration of the San Francisco Conference until the United Nations was fully established.  Stettinius then resigned in July 1945.

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Day 78 - Atlantic Charter Conference

On August 3, 1941, the White House informed the press that FDR was leaving Washington for a fishing cruise.  

In fact, the President was headed for a top-secret meeting with Winston Churchill aboard two warships in the North Atlantic. FDR used the conference to signal support for Britain in its battle with the Axis Powers. The conference lasted from August 9-12. At its conclusion, Roosevelt and Churchill issued the “Atlantic Charter”- a joint declaration of principles that helped rally the Allied nations.

The Atlantic Conference gave the British people hope that the United States would at last join them in fighting Hitler.  But when isolationists claimed FDR had made “secret commitments” to Churchill to intervene in the European war, Roosevelt publicly denied the charges.    

In January 1941, prior to their meeting in the North Atlantic, Roosevelt wrote to Winston Churchill quoting a verse from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “The Building of the Ship.” The note proved to be an inspiration for Churchill, who at the time was anxiously seeking American support in the war. Churchill repeated the lines in a radio broadcast and it soon became an inspiration for the British people.

When Roosevelt and Churchill met for the Atlantic Conference seven months later, Churchill brought with him two of these decorative broadside lithographs featuring the same verse. Both Roosevelt and Churchill signed each print and Churchill presented this copy to FDR.

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Day 77 - FDR visits the Panama Canal

Throughout his travels FDR made many trips through the Panama Canal, including a visit to the nearly completed Canal in 1912. The work on the Canal started under President Theodore Roosevelt and was finished in 1914. FDR traveled to Panama with his brother-in-law Hall Roosevelt and his friend and Republican Senate colleague J. Mayhew Wainright. The trio was given their own personal observation car to use through the nine-mile Culebra Cut. FDR wrote home to his mother Sara saying:

I can’t begin to describe it and have become so enthusiastic that if I didn’t stop I would write all night. The two things that impress me most are the Culebra Cut, because of the colossal hole made in the ground, and the locks because of the engineering problems and size. Imagine an intricate concrete structure nearly a mile long and three or four hundred feet wide, with double gates of steel weighing 700 tons apiece!

Our museum collection includes this watercolor painting of the U.S.S. Houston at the Panama Canal by Ian Marshall. This painting depicts the scene of the Houston passing through the Panama Canal on July 11, 1934 with President Roosevelt on board. This was the first passage through the completed Canal by a U.S. President while in office.

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Day 76: FDR Visits Alaska

On August 3, 1944 FDR arrived in Alaska for a six day inspection and fishing trip. While in Alaska FDR made stops at Adak, Kodiak, and Auke Bay. This flag of the President of the United States was used during FDR's trip to the Hawaiian Islands and Alaska in July-August 1944. It was made by the Signal Force of the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Baltimore.

This trip made news during the presidential campaign of 1944, when it was alleged that Fala was left behind in the Aleutian Islands and FDR sent a Navy destroyer back to retrieve him. In a speech to the Teamsters Union on September 23, 1944 FDR responded to the claims saying:

These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him— at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars- his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself—such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog.

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Day 75 - FDR Visits Hawaii, 1944

FDR's second and final visit to Hawaii came in 1944. FDR arrived at Pearl Harbor on July 26, 1944 for a three day inspection trip. While in Hawaii he visited the Marine Corps Air Station at Ewa, the Scofield Barracks in Honolulu and Hickham Field. FDR and his party were also treated to a concert of Hawaiian music and hula dancing. The video above includes some of FDR's informal remarks to the troops.

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Day 74: Eleanor Roosevelt and the United Nations

“We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. . . . This declaration may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere.” -Eleanor Roosevelt, Speech to U.N. General Assembly on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 9, 1948

In December 1945, seeking to signal America’s commitment to the new United Nations organization— and cement his ties to a powerful Democratic party figure— President Harry Truman appointed Eleanor Roosevelt to America’s first delegation to the General Assembly.

Eleanor quickly became a major force on refugee and human rights issues. From 1946 to 1951 she chaired the U.N. Human Rights Commission leading the effort to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  An able and determined negotiator, she clashed frequently with Soviet delegates over the definition of human liberties. In the process, she pushed the State Department to recognize that human rights are not only civil and political rights, but social and economic rights too. The Declaration was Eleanor’s proudest achievement at the U.N. It created the modern definition of human rights. Today it is the standard for establishing norms governing international behavior regarding the rights of individuals.

Eleanor’s duties as a delegate to the United Nations included many trips abroad to London, Paris and Geneva. Eleanor received several gifts during these trips including:

A tortoise shell box presented to ER by an English woman as a token of appreciation in the winter of 1946.

A color print of the painting by Frank Beresford of Eleanor Roosevelt addressing the United Nations in London, England, on February 12, 1946. Inscribed and presented to ER by the artist.

A University of Lyon Academic Stole and Cap presented to ER in November 1948 when she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Lyon, France.

A silver United Nations medallion presented to ER by the government of France.

A watercolor of the Rue des Corps-Saints in Geneva’s Old Town by Harry Urban. Presented to ER by the artist in April 1951. The painting hung in the living room of ER’s NYC apartment until her death.

A group of French commemorative medallions, including one for FDR, from the government of France given to ER during her 1951-52 trip.

A lithograph of The American Church of Paris by Frank Milton Armington. Presented to ER by the church’s minister, Clayton E. Williams, in December 1951. The print hung in the living room of ER’s NYC apartment until her death.

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Day 73: Antarctica

This small American flag was carried by American aviator and explorer Admiral Richard E. Byrd during his historic trip to the North Pole in 1926, during his trans-Atlantic flight in 1927, over the South Pole in 1929, and over Roosevelt Island and other territories in 1929 and 1934. Byrd presented the flag to FDR in 1934.

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Day 72: FDR visits the front in WWI

FDR served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I. During the summer of 1918 he traveled to Europe to visit the front lines of the fighting in France. FDR made stops in England and Paris before heading towards the trenches. He visited the battlefields at Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Verdun, was briefly under enemy fire and came within a mile of the German lines. FDR wrote about his experience in a log he kept during the trip.

This "Tankstelle," or “Gas Station,” signboard was found by FDR within a half hour after the Germans had evacuated an area in France, during the big Allied offensive in August 1918.