Born in Hyde Park, New York, to a wealthy family, Franklin Roosevelt was a distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt. Soon after graduating from Harvard in 1904, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, another distant cousin. Franklin practiced law in New York from 1907 to 1910. He then served in the state legislature until 1913. Roosevelt became the assistant secretary of the navy in 1913, a position he held until 1920. In 1921 he became ill with polio, a disease that left him with some paralysis. From 1929 to 1933, Roosevelt served as governor of New York. In 1932 he was elected president as a Democrat. During the Great Depression he initiated a series of programs known as the New Deal in an effort to achieve national economic recovery. Roosevelt was re-elected in 1936 and 1940. In foreign policy, Roosevelt kept the United States neutral until early in World War II, when he began to aid the Allied Powers in Europe. With Winston Churchill, he issued the 1941 Atlantic Charter, which expressed the postwar goals of the United States and Great Britain. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the United States declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy. During the war, Roosevelt tried to establish good working relations with the Soviet Union. In 1944 he was elected to a fourth term as president but died the following year.
