Today on Nov. 8, 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected the 32nd President of the United States in the depths of the Great Depression, trouncing incumbent President Herbert Hoover. FDR won 57.4 percent of the popular vote to Hoovers 39.7 percent, carrying 42 states and 472 electoral votes to the Presidents 6 states and 59 electoral votes. Hoover carried Pennsylvania, Vermont, Delaware, New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island. When the 51-year-old Roosevelt took office on Mar. 4, 1933, the ranks of the nations unemployed were about 15 million, or about one-third of the work force. In 32 states, every bank had been closed by state government edict, and the bank operations in the other 16 states severely curtailed. On the morning of his inauguration, the New York Stock Exchange closed its doors. The same day, FDR declared a bank holiday, closing all banks in the nation for 4 days, and called Congress into special session. Economic as well as spiritual fear, bordering on panic, was everywhere. It was against this backdrop that President Roosevelt delivered one of the most famous speeches in American history, counseling calm in the face of national calamity: youtube/watch?v=amNpxQANk0M
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 14:59:59 +0000
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