David McCullough: [voice-over] "All that is within me," Franklin Roosevelt once wrote, "cries out to go back to my home on the Hudson River." Hyde Park was the center of the world.

Radio Newscaster: We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin from CBS World News. A press association has just announced that President Roosevelt is dead. The President died of a cerebral hemorrhage. All we know so far is that the President died at Warm Springs in Georgia.

David McCullough [voice-over]: On April 13, 1945, the funeral train headed north. In the last car lay the body of the President of the United States. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had led Americans through the great Depression and the greatest war in history. Now, along railroad tracks from Georgia to New York, they gathered to say goodbye.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: A whole generation of Americans had grown up knowing no other president. He was a presence in their living rooms. He'd called them "my friends." He'd been at the helm through the two worst crises of this century. And to have him suddenly gone was an overwhelming shock.

Robert Fulton Copeland, Warm Springs Resident: The boss man come into the field and he throwed up his hand. I was flying a tractor. He said, "Mr. Roosevelt died today." I said, "What?" He said, "Mr. Roosevelt died today." I just set there. I just set there astonished. I felt like I had lost one of the closest brothers I ever had.

Eli Ginzberg, F.D.R. Administration: It was the single greatest feeling of loss, disorientation, uncertainty and the sense that the whole world was now without the one man that it needed.

David Ginsburg, F.D.R. Administration: This was a man of great ebullience. He was a man of constant cheer. He was a man of laughter. He had the feeling of life. There was vitality. This was a country in despair, and he brought us all together.

David McCullough: [voice-over] He was the man with the big, easy smile, the infectious sense of humor.

Reporter: Mr. President, how soon are you coming back?

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Just as soon as Congress will let me.

David McCullough: [voice-over] He loved conversation, company and good times.

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Last year I nearly killed a photographer. All ready?

David McCullough: [voice-over] This was how Americans saw Franklin Roosevelt. This was the man they trusted so much they elected him president four times.

Alistair Cooke, Journalist: People just idolized him. The most astounding thing was the pictures of Roosevelt you saw everywhere. Bus stations, libraries, barber shops, homes -- there were pictures of Roosevelt. And the entire country decided he was the savior.

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt: We face the future with confidence and with courage. We are Americans.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Never before Roosevelt had Americans felt that government would take care of them, protect their homes and their farms, guarantee their savings accounts, promise them security in sickness and old age. But the President who championed the common man was not like most Americans.

Part One: The Center of the World

David McCullough: [voice-over] "My dear Mama, I am in a great hurry. I found two birds' nests. I took one egg. Your loving Franklin." Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent his childhood among people so unlike ordinary Americans they modeled themselves after the lords and ladies of England.

Bronson Chanler, Hudson Valley Neighbor: The world of wealth and privilege that F.D.R. grew up with was one that was essentially very comfortable for everybody. And the families that lived on those estates were generally friends with one another, related very often to each other, and were the only people that visited one another. I think it's fair to say that even the professional men in the towns, who were the doctors and the lawyers and so on, were not generally invited to the river houses to dinner.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Franklin Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York on January 30, 1882 on the big, forested estate his parents called Springwood.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: Springwood was a beautiful, isolated place. It was its own world, and it was entirely built around this privileged little boy. And I think he spent most of his life trying to replicate the way his boyhood was arranged.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "At the very outset he was plump, pink and nice," his mother said. "I used to love to bathe and dress him. He looked very sweet, his little blonde curls bobbing as he ran as fast as he could whenever he thought I had designs on combing them."

Nearly every detail of Franklin's childhood was recorded with single-minded devotion by his mother, Sarah Delano Roosevelt. She kept his baby clothes, every childish drawing, each golden curl. Franklin was eight and a half years old before he was allowed to bathe himself.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: If it's the job of a mother to make her child feel that he or she can do anything, then Sarah Delano Roosevelt was surely one of the great mothers in American history.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Franklin's father was more than 25 years older than Sarah. He was 53 when Franklin was born. Franklin called him "Popsy." Everyone else called him "Mr. James." Mr. James bred trotters and rode to the hounds. He smoked cheroots. He would ride out with his son to survey their estate. The workers tipped their hats to Mr. James and then to Master Franklin. The boy accepted these displays of deference as routine.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: F.D.R. grew up in a very tight little island. He learned how to please adults from probably before he remembered. His activities were related to showing off for them, relating to them, not to other children, and he didn't go off to play games with other children. I don't think he ever swung a baseball bat until he finally went to school. He was tutored at home or abroad, because every year they went abroad for several months. F.D.R., with all this attention, was undoubtedly a lonely boy.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Franklin wandered his family estate, secure, he later said, in the peacefulness and regularity of things. Then, when he was nine, his well-ordered world fractured. His 63-year-old father suffered a heart attack. Any irritation might aggravate him, provoke another heart attack and kill him.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: His father's sickness must have reinforced the tendency that was already in him as a small child to be a nice boy, to never make any trouble, never make anybody sad. Now he had to worry, "If I go in there and make trouble, I may weaken his already-weakened heart." So it must have put an enormous pressure on this kid.

David McCullough: [voice-over] With an infirm father and a domineering mother, Franklin learned to conceal his true feelings. Throughout his life, he would remain a charming but distant figure even to those who were closest to him. When he was 14 years old, Franklin left the rarified world of his Hyde Park estate. His path seemed clear -- boarding school, Harvard, and an uneventful life of luxury and ease among his own kind.

"Dear Mama, I am getting on very well with the fellows. I have not had any black marks or lateness yet, and I'm much better in my studies."

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: His letters are always cheerful -- everything's wonderful, he's having a grand time with the other fellows -- and yet he wasn't. He was, I think, quite unhappy.

David McCullough: [voice-over] At Groton, the private school for sons of the rich, Franklin, with all his charm and self-assurance, expected to excel. He did please his teachers and took to heart his headmaster's urgings toward public service, but he did not fit in with the boys.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: Groton was his first exposure to other children on a regular basis. After all, he boarded -- all the children boarded -- so he was with other boys 24 hours a day. And it must have been a rude shock to come out of that nest, that very protective nest where he was the only bird or chick in the nest.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Sports meant everything at Groton, but Franklin was too slight for success. His mother worried Franklin might be injured and wrote that he "not have the misfortune of hurting anyone." He was enthusiastic about baseball, but only carried the bats and fetched the water for the ballplayers.

Jeffery Potter, Groton School Alumnus: He wasn't an athlete. He had never played with other boys' games much, and that was very bad indeed, because it made him an outsider, as if he wasn't -- no, as if he didn't belong and really in a sense where he didn't belong.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Plunged into an unforgiving world of adolescent boys, Franklin never fit in. His struggle for acceptance only isolated him further.

Jeffery Potter, Groton School Alumnus: Franklin's tone was not the Groton tone. He seemed so desperate for approval. He was too ambitious and too eager and he was very much, I would say from what I've heard, very close to being a golden retriever. In other words, his tail was always wagging even when it shouldn't be.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Jeffrey Potter's father was the star of the baseball team. "I can't understand this thing about Frank," he said when Roosevelt became president. "He never amounted to much at school." At Groton, Franklin confessed years later, something had gone sadly wrong.

At Harvard, he was determined to win popularity and recognition, and he did succeed. He campaigned for class office and won and was elected editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, but what he wanted even more was admission to Porcellian, Harvard's most exclusive club.

Bronson Chanler, Hudson Valley Neighbor:You immediately, if you were a member of the Porcellian Club, were recognized as a-- as we say in the club, a brother, by all graduates who had been in the place that were still alive. But it was essentially a network of friendships, not of power but of friendships, but that could lead to power.

David McCullough: [voice-over] The election was secret, held behind closed doors in the Porcellian Clubhouse. Each member was given one white and one black ball. A single black ball deposited in the wooden ballot box was all it took to exclude a candidate. His father had been a member. So had other Roosevelts. Franklin had every reason to believe that he would be chosen, too. Franklin was blackballed.

Bronson Chanler, Hudson Valley Neighbor: No doubt Franklin Roosevelt failed to be elected to the Porcellian Club for the simple reason that somebody who was in there at the time didn't like him. You didn't have to have done anything particularly significant. The fellow would just say, "I don't like the cut of your jib, so I don't want you in there," and out you went.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Years later when he was president and the New Deal at high tide, there were those Porcellian members who would call him a traitor to his class and ascribe his social policies to revenge.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: Certainly, none of Roosevelt's classmates at Harvard imagined that he would ever be president. I think they were the first of many, many people who underestimated Roosevelt.

David McCullough: [voice-over] While Franklin was at Harvard, his father, 72 years old and grown frail and weak from heart disease, died. Sarah wrote in her diary, "All is over. He merely slept away." Now her boy was all she had left. She moved to Boston to be near him. A family friend once wrote, "She would not let her son call his soul his own."

Franklin began using a secret code in his diary. He wrote, "E is an angel." Franklin had fallen in love with a distant cousin. "E" was Eleanor Roosevelt. From the first, Eleanor Roosevelt saw that there was a serious man beneath the easygoing charm. For the rest of their life together, even through the most difficult years of their marriage, she would be drawn to the serious side of his nature.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: Franklin and Eleanor come, from the same social class. There are certain mores, customs, rituals that link their childhoods. Everything else is so totally different they might have come from the other ends of the world.

Eleanor Roosevelt: I was a very ugly little girl. My mother was very beautiful. I think she always wondered why her daughter had to be so ugly. I adored my mother, but rather like a distant and beautiful thing that I couldn't possibly get close to.

Oh, my father meant a tremendous amount. I adored him all the days of my childhood. He called me Little Nell after the Little Nell in Dickens's story, and I always liked that.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Eleanor's childhood was a series of losses. Her parents' marriage was troubled. Elliott Roosevelt was an alcoholic. Erratic and self-destructive, he left home when she was six. Less than two years later, her mother died of diphtheria. The year after, her younger brother died, and the following year her beloved, drunken father died. Eleanor and her brother were left with dutiful, reserved relatives. She grew afraid of other children, mice, the dark, practically everything.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: From the melancholy lives of both of her parents, Eleanor took away the feeling that love never lasts, that the world is a dark and forbidding place and that you never can count on anything.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Then when she was 15, she was sent to an English boarding school called Allenswood where she was encouraged to think for herself, be independent, overcome her fears.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: Allenswood was definitely a turning point. It was the first time that she was really allowed to shine, and her own specialness was recognized. That is really where she got her sense of security and also her sense of her own power.

David McCullough: [voice-over] The years she spent at Allenswood, Eleanor said, were the happiest of her life. She was 18 when Franklin began to pursue her.

Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: He was a gay and outgoing and charming young man. There was something very sympathetic about him and romantic, and they had a very sweet and romantic relationship according to their early letters.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "We have had two happy days together," she wrote him, "and you know how grateful I am for every moment which I have with you. Your devoted Little Nell."

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: Eleanor's relatives and friends thought of Franklin as a feather duster, which meant somebody who just skimmed along the surface of life and never got very deep into anything at all, so I'm not sure they thought that he was such a wonderful catch for her, because even then Eleanor had a certain vitality, a certain seriousness of purpose that made people feel that she was something special.

Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: Can you imagine how different she must have been from the average run of debutantes of the time? She must have been very interesting, besides being tall with a beautiful figure, fine light hair and lovely skin and great warmth. There was something else, too, and this is not to be underestimated. It didn't hurt his courtship that her uncle was President of the United States.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Theodore Roosevelt was a hugely popular president -- tireless, voluble, inspiring. T.R., someone said, was a steam engine in trousers. As a boy, Franklin had watched with pride his distant cousin's spectacular rise to power: assistant secretary of the Navy, governor of New York, President of the United States. "Theodore Roosevelt," Franklin would later say, "was the greatest man I ever knew." Now Franklin was courting the President's favorite niece. The President was "dee-lighted" that Franklin had proposed marriage to Eleanor. Franklin's mother was not. Franklin had in fact concealed from Sarah the entire courtship.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: The fact that she didn't even know that he was in love with this girl, she didn't know the most important thing that was happening in her son's life, and she thought she knew every waking thought in this child from the time he was born.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "Dearest Mama, I know what pain I must have caused you and you know I wouldn't do it if I really could have helped it, but I know my mind and I'm the happiest man just now in the world."

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: And finally she had to accept that this was going to happen and decided that she would control Eleanor and then somehow she wouldn't lose Franklin.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: I think F.D.R. was very much attracted to my grandmother because they were two lonely people, two people who were not totally satisfied with the standards and ideals of their upper-class group. And I think the two of them looked at each other and knew that they could draw strength from each other.

David McCullough: [voice-over] On March 17, 1905 -- St. Patrick's Day -- Franklin and Eleanor were married. He was 23, she was 20. The President of the United States was there to give away the bride. "Well, Franklin," T.R. told the groom, "there's nothing like keeping the name in the family." The honeymoon was a three-month grand tour of Europe.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: On the surface, everything seemed fine -- they're seeing Venice, they're seeing Rome -- but at nights, Roosevelt, Eleanor reported, would be tormented by nightmares, and he sleepwalking. And then he broke out in hives, all of which suggested that something wasn't right.

David McCullough: [voice-over] They climbed the Alps, motored through the French countryside. Few would have sensed that they were ill at ease.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: He loved to have a good time. All his life, he loved to do that. She wanted someone she could confide in. She'd been alone really all her life and she wanted an intimate partner. She did not get one in Franklin. He didn't like sharing intimacies with anyone, even his wife.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Back in America, Sarah was waiting. "I am so glad," Sarah had written them, "that although you've had such a perfect time, you are now anxious to see home and Mother again." That winter, as a Christmas gift, Sarah gave them a drawing with the note scrawled on the bottom: "To Franklin and Eleanor from Mama, number and street not yet quite decided."

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: When Franklin and Eleanor arrive home from their honeymoon, Sarah tells them, "I've got a present for you, it's great, a new home." Not only that, but it's furnished by her, it's structured by her, it's decorated by her, it's her.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Sarah built them a brownstone and then moved into its twin next door.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: The house is five stories and on each floor there are sliding doors where she can walk from her side of the house into their side. And Eleanor Roosevelt writes there was never any privacy day or night. Sarah Delano Roosevelt was just part of the scene.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: In a way, great-grandmother made her dependent. She wanted both her son and her daughter-in-law to be dependent upon her. His mother controlled F.D.R.'s purse strings until the day she died in 1941 when he was into his third term as president, and -- but, you know, the President of the United States didn't control his own income. His mother did.

Eleanor Seagraves, Granddaughter: The first 10 years of her married life were spent having children -- six children in about 10 years. She loved the children, but she didn't really know how to run that infant stage.

Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: I think she was totally inept when it came to dealing with children. She relied on her mother-in-law and on the various governesses and was so unsure of herself not only because she was an unsure person at the time, but she had never experienced mother love.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: And because she felt insecure about not knowing how to mother her own children, she once again turned to Sarah. Sarah knew. Sarah had confidence. Sarah had an opinion about everything. So it wasn't only that they brought in nurses and grannies to help the children, Sarah was the overseer of the house entirely and of the kids.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: His mother's ever-looming presence was never challenged. F.D.R. never wanted to move out of his mother's home, and so they lived in Sarah Delano Roosevelt's homes. At Hyde Park, it's her home, so she sits at the head of the table, Franklin sits at the other end of the table, and Eleanor sits somewhere in the middle with the children.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: I see her as an upper-class grande dame who knew her place. She was just doing what came naturally. She, in a way, knew who she was, and my grandmother, in the early years of her marriage, didn't know who she was. That took a long time for her to find out.

David McCullough: [voice-over] In the early 1900s, the Roosevelts appeared to be an utterly conventional upper class couple, with Franklin amiably dabbling in the law, but at 25, he was bored and restless, looking for an outlet for his enormous energies. To a fellow law clerk, he confided a remarkable secret ambition.

Grenville Clark, Law Clerk: He said he intended to enter political life as soon as he could, with a view to becoming president. He said that modestly enough but very definitely, and he laid out a definite plan.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Franklin told Clark he would follow the path blazed by his hero, Theodore Roosevelt -- state legislature, assistant secretary of the Navy, governor of New York, President of the United States. Cousin Theodore had already proved that a gentleman might, as Franklin's mother said, "go into politics but not be a politician."

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: Theodore Roosevelt was almost an obsession with Franklin. When he was told he had to wear glasses, he got pince-nez and put them on his nose, because Theodore Roosevelt wore pince-nez. He would say things like, "bully" and "dee-lighted" when he was talking to the press early in his political career. He was fascinated by his energy, his enthusiasm, above all, I think, in his feeling that government could do enormous amounts of good. Theodore Roosevelt was the great model for Franklin Roosevelt.

David McCullough: [voice-over] In 1910 at the age of 28, Franklin jumped at the chance to follow in his cousin Theodore's footsteps. He was invited to run for the state senate, mostly because his last name was Roosevelt. He ran as a Democrat, although T.R. was a Republican.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: His father had been a Democrat, but I think the real reason was that Theodore Roosevelt had several sons, all of whom, everyone presumed, were going to have political careers in the Republican Party, and there was simply not enough room for another Republican Roosevelt.

Eleanor Roosevelt: He was offered the impossible task of running for office in Duchess County. No Democrat had ever been elected in 32 years. He wasn't a very good speaker in those early days. There would be horrible long pauses, and I would wonder whether he was ever going on again. He made a very vigorous campaign, and it just happening that that year was a Democratic sweep and he got in. Otherwise, I don't think he would have started then at all.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Franklin celebrated by handing out $14 worth of good cigars. In Albany, in the rough-and-tumble world of state politics, he began his career in the style of his cousin Theodore. Within days of being sworn in, he led a rebellion against the leadership of his own party. He lost and the bosses never forgave him.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: Party regulars couldn't stand him. They thought he was rich, spoiled, unwilling to compromise or cooperate -- a snob.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "This fellow is still young," one of them said, "Wouldn't it be safer to drown him before he grows up?" To survive, Franklin would need help, and he turned to a shrewd, strange-looking reporter, Louis Howe.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: I remember the smell of Louis Howe more than anything else -- a gnome, gaunt, short wispy hair -- I mean, enough to scare a child, and I was.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: He's dirty. He never showers or bathes enough. He smokes these dreadful, smelly Sweet Caporal cigarettes and the ashes, you know, sort of coat his vest and tie.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Franklin's mother especially disliked him. "That dirty little man," she called him. Eleanor, too, disapproved.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: They want him out. He represents the worst, the smelliest, you know, stuff of politics. He drinks, he smokes, he curses. He's a pain. Out of there.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: But still Louis Howe was a seasoned politician. As you might say, he knew where all the bodies were buried, and F.D.R. needed to know.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Together Howe and Franklin formed one of the oddest alliances in American political history. It would last until Howe's death in 1936. "I was so impressed with Franklin Roosevelt," Howe liked to say of their first meeting, "I thought then nothing but an accident could keep him from becoming President of the United States."

In 1913, after only two years in Albany, the Democratic state senator with the famous last name was summoned to Washington. Impressed by his growing reputation as a reform Democrat and by Franklin's pedigree, President Woodrow Wilson offered him the job of assistant secretary of the Navy, the same job that Theodore Roosevelt had used to catapult himself to the presidency. He was just 31 years old.

Franklin loved the Navy. He pressed for the largest possible fleet, learned to deal with Congress, businessmen, labor, and he built a reputation as enthusiastic, efficient, hard-working. But just as he began to walk the corridors of real power, first he put his job and then his marriage in jeopardy.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: Washington for Franklin is a great liberation. You know, he never had a teenage rebellion. He never had a moment where he defied his mother or his wife. He had really been a dutiful son and he'd really been a dutiful husband. Washington blew all that out of the water, if I may use a naval term for the assistant secretary of the Navy.

David McCullough: [voice-over] He was a young man on the make. He worked for Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, and he wanted his job -- ridiculed him behind his back, undermined his decisions.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: F.D.R. worked as a subordinate under Josephus Daniels for almost eight years, and he was a terrible subordinate. I think he simply couldn't stand the notion that someone was giving him orders about something he was quite sure he knew much more about. Roosevelt undercut his boss time and again. He went over his head to the President from time to time, and Daniels put up with all of it.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Daniels said he enjoyed Franklin's spontaneity and gaiety, imagining great things for him. When they looked at their picture taken together, Daniels told him, "I'll tell you why you're smiling. We're both looking down on the White House, and you're saying to yourself, 'Someday I will be living in that house.'" Franklin just kept smiling.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: Daniels thought Roosevelt a wonderfully charming young man and, I think, must have been the most patient man in American history, because any other man would have fired Roosevelt for insubordination early on.

David McCullough: [voice-over] At the same time, Franklin's marriage was heading for trouble.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: It was not a happy household. F.D.R. enjoyed himself, he enjoyed having a good time, and unfortunately, he couldn't get my grandmother to go along. She actually disapproved. She had moral reservations, is the only way I can put it, about really enjoying herself.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Eleanor was caught in what she described as the slavery of the Washington social system, dutifully advancing her husband's career. Overwhelmed with social obligations, she spent her days leaving her calling cards at the stately homes of the rich and powerful. "I was perfectly certain," Eleanor later wrote, "that I had nothing to offer, and that my duty as the wife of a public official was to do exactly as the majority of women were doing."

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: And suddenly the most important thing is to be part of the social whirl of Washington, D.C., which is essentially a round of cocktail parties, trivial conversation, the very thing that Eleanor hates. Franklin finds out that he's incredibly well suited for the small-talk, gossipy side of Washington life. He's a great conversationalist, he loves telling stories, he loves small talk and he loves that kind of superficial connection between people -- and his vitality and his magnetism are beginning to show.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Franklin was especially attractive to women. One Washington hostess described him as the most desirable man she had ever met.

Every summer, the Roosevelts seemed to find relief from the strains of Washington on an island off the coast of Maine -- Campobello. "We spent so little time alone with our parents," their eldest son James later wrote, "that those times are treasured as though gifts from the gods. Father loved life on the island more than any of us, but got to spend the least time there. Mother always liked it because she had her own home, which she ran. Father taught us to sail. This was the one activity he loved above all others, and wanted us to love."

But as summer after summer went by, Franklin spent less and less time at Campobello. Eleanor grew anxious and suspicious. In the summer of 1917, Franklin wrote from Washington to calm her -- "Dearest Babs, you are a goosey girl to think or even pretend to think that I don't want you here all summer, because you know I do. But honestly, you ought to have six weeks straight at Campo, just as I ought to, only you can and I can't."

When America entered World War I, the Navy sent Franklin on an inspection tour of the western front. He reviewed the troops, toured the battlefields, and got as close to the fighting as the military would allow him. As he was about to sail back to America, he was struck down by a strain of influenza and brought home severely ill.

Franklin was 36 years old. He had handsome children, a dutiful wife, a famous name, and a rising career. As Eleanor unpacked his suitcase, she accidentally made a discovery that would change their lives forever -- a packet of love letters to her husband. Lucy Page Mercer was Eleanor's own social secretary. She was a refined young woman from an old southern Catholic family.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: Lucy was tall and statuesque. She had a face, people say, that belonged in drawing rooms. She had a charm that was rivaled only by Franklin's charm. One thinks of Franklin in those days -- and indeed throughout his life -- as this incorrigible flirt. Flirting was a part of his vitality, his magnetism, his charm. He loved to conquer women in conversation, so that's probably how it started with Lucy, but then I do think it became something more.

David McCullough: [voice-over] While Eleanor was away at Campobello, Franklin spent time with Lucy alone and even appeared with her at dinner parties. He had fallen in love.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: Eleanor Roosevelt really had a very romantic idea that she could have a perfect marriage, that they would love and trust and respect each other and be partners in love the way her parents never were, which is, I think, why her discovery of the Lucy Mercer affair was so devastating to her.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "The bottom dropped out of my own particular world," Eleanor confided to a friend, "and I faced myself, my surroundings, my world honestly for the first time."

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: Eleanor's immediate response was not only to confront Franklin, but, from what we seem to understand, to offer him a divorce -- "If this is what you want, go."

Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: Mr. Roosevelt knew that his mother would withdraw all financial help -- she'd threatened him with that -- he would lose his family life and it really meant giving up his political ambitions, and that was something he had to think over more than once.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Franklin would have to choose between his love for Lucy Mercer and his political career, family and Eleanor.

Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: And he finally decided to stay married and to try to make the best of the marriage. And Mrs. Roosevelt's condition was that he never see Lucy Mercer again.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "After everyone had their say," James later wrote, "Father and Mother sat down and agreed to go on for the sake of appearances." Eleanor and Franklin would live together but never again share the intimacies of married life. Devastated, Eleanor went time and again to Washington's Rock Creek Cemetery. For hours she sat gazing at a monument to a woman who had killed herself. All her childhood fears had been confirmed. Those she loved most -- first her father, now her husband -- would always desert her. Nothing lasted.

Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: It was a marked turning point in her life. She had no persona, she felt destroyed. She'd have to make a life for herself, and that's what she did.

David McCullough: [voice-over] The surprise of the 1920 Democratic Convention was the nomination for vice president. "The young man I am going to suggest," the speaker said, "has a name to be conjured within American politics." Franklin Delano Roosevelt was 38, one of the youngest vice presidential candidates in American history. His cousin Theodore had been 42 in this point in his career. Franklin was now ahead of schedule.

As the campaign got under way, he threw open his mother's Hyde Park home for a party rally. Sarah was proud, but appalled when 5,000 loyal Democrats trampled her lawn and invaded her stately home.

Vice presidential candidates usually ran modest campaigns, but Franklin barnstormed more than 8,000 miles through 20 states in 18 days. "During the three months in the year 1920," he said, "I got to know the country as only a candidate for office or a traveling salesman can get to know it."

Franklin pressed Eleanor to accompany him on the campaign. Reluctantly she went along and hated every minute of it -- the smoke-filled rooms, the late-night card games, the hard-drinking politicians and reporters. Ever since her discovery of her husband's affair, she'd been cautiously embracing a life of her own.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: Before Lucy came into their lives, my own sense is that Eleanor was not happy simply as a wife and a mother, but she had no outlet for her energy. She had torrential energy and there was no outlet for it because in that day and age, it wasn't legitimate for a woman to have a career outside the home.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: The affair with Lucy Mercer enabled her to see herself in perhaps a different light, and I personally believe that F.D.R.'s affair with Lucy Mercer enabled my grandmother to open a door and walk out.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: She meets with all of these political women -- they were suffragists, they were progressives -- they are dedicated to making things better for most people.

Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: They were women who knew things, who could educate her, who could teach her parliamentary law, who could tell her about the labor movement, labor unions and so on. It also was slightly rebellious of her. She was breaking bounds.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Eleanor was moving into a vanguard of women who were political activists. In 1920, women were voting in their first national election, and Franklin, never missing a political beat, was ardently courting their vote. He loved every minute of the 1920 campaign, but when an aide asked him if he thought he would be elected, he replied, "Nary an illusion."

For the Democrats, the election was a disaster. For the Republicans, the victory, one observer said, "was more than a landslide, it was an earthquake." But for Franklin, the campaign was a triumph. Americans all across the country now knew his name. He had met and won the good will of thousands of party leaders. He stood ready to aim higher than the vice presidency next time. At 38, he was young, strong, energetic and impatient.

In the summer of 1921, he visited a Boy Scout camp serving city children. He enjoyed himself immensely, posing for pictures for the newspapers and joking with the boys. This is the last photograph of Franklin Roosevelt standing on his own two feet.

When he said goodbye, he took with him the good will of the campers and a mysterious, undetected virus already multiplying and circulating throughout his body.

August 14, 1921 - "We have had a very few anxious days," Eleanor wrote from Campobello. "Wednesday evening, Franklin was taken ill. By Friday evening, he lost the ability to walk or move his legs. The doctor feels sure he will get well, but it may take some time."

"I tried to persuade myself that the trouble with my leg was muscular," Franklin remembered, "that it would disappear as I used it, but presently it refused to work, and then the other."

Hugh Gallagher, Biographer: It started with a cold, the feeling of malaise, ache in the back and lack of appetite and he said he thought he wouldn't have dinner and he went up to his room, and he never walked again, and ultimately, at the high point, he was helpless.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: For a man as energetic, who'd led such a charmed life, to suddenly be paralyzed must have been almost unbearable. He asked Louis Howe why God had deserted him, at one point. He tried to put on a brave front with the children, but he was terrified. They didn't know what it was. They didn't know what they could do about it. Certainly, it was the blackest moment of his life and seemed to be the end of his life.

David McCullough: [voice-over] His fever soared. Eleanor remembered he was out of his head.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: Eleanor responds immediately with help, with support, with courage in facing the severity of what he's going through. She stays up 24 hours, she's by his side. She doesn't run away from it.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Desperate, Eleanor called in an orthopedic specialist from Harvard Medical School. The diagnosis, he told them, was perfectly clear -- infantile paralysis, polio.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: He couldn't believe this had happened to him, but even in those circumstances, he kept to the Roosevelt code, which was that you did not complain and that you tried to convince everyone that everything was going to be fine. He was very careful to be cheerful in front of his mother, and she was very careful to be cheerful in front of him, and only after she left him did she cry.

David McCullough: [voice-over] A private railroad car brought Franklin home to New York City. With every curve and jounce, he winced in pain. He was 39 years old. No one knew what sort of life might now be possible for him, but one thing seemed certain -- his political career was finished.

Hugh Gallagher, Biographer: He was an aristocrat. He was well-born. He was good-looking. He had always had everything. All of a sudden, there he was, crippled in a day when it was a very difficult thing to be crippled. In the 1920s, why, polio was a terrifying thing. Something like 25 percent of people who caught polio died of it within the first two weeks. If you survived and you had paralysis, they didn't know what to do, and "nice" families kept their disabled members at home in the back bedroom with the blinds drawn. There was a certain shame attached to it somehow.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: His mother decided that the best thing to do was for him to come home to Hyde Park and to live the life, really, that his father had lived as an invalid. She would take care of him and he could pursue his hobbies and small interests, but he would have to give up politics.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: It's one of those moments that is absolutely a defining moment for Eleanor, because she knows that if Sarah has her way, Franklin's soul will be destroyed. So she has to do something she's never done before. She has to confront Sarah directly to tell her, "You're wrong and I'm not going to let this happen. He's going to be able to get out of this house, he's going to walk again, he's going to get into politics, and I don't care what you say." She may not have said it that boldly, but she definitely was willing to make a major confrontation with her mother-in-law that all of her earlier life she had been unable to make. She became the voice for his inner needs, his inner feelings, and in some ways, that's what she becomes all of their lives.

Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: She had a discipline and a willpower that was staggering. She said to me once, "The only time in my life that I cried in his presence when he had polio was when he called us up into the room and he showed us -- 'Look,' he said, 'what I can do.'" He was phobic about being caught in a fire, helpless in a fire. He got himself down from the bed and he showed them with great pride how he slithered on the floor, using his elbows to get to the door. And with that, Mrs. Roosevelt broke down in tears and fled. And she said that was the only time she didn't control herself in front of him.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Franklin's life was now in limbo. He would devote the next seven years to one single goal -- to get back on his feet. The doctors told him that his only hope was exercise. With heavy steel braces grappled to his legs, he began the awkward struggle to learn to walk. "I must get down the driveway today, all the way down the driveway," his daughter Anna heard him say.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: Polio exercises were very painful, very tedious, humiliating. They took up endless time. And I think it's a measure of his ambition and his grit that he kept at them as long and as hard as he did.

David McCullough: [voice-over] After a year of unrelenting struggle, the doctors told Franklin it was all but certain that he would never walk again, but he would not accept their verdict.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: The rules that applied to other people did not apply to Franklin Roosevelt, and he refused to believe that he was not going to get better. He tried everything -- sunlamp treatments -- special electric belts that were supposed to make him somehow stronger -- pulley arrangements to do his exercises automatically.

Hugh Gallagher, Biographer: Deep massage, light massage, range-of-motion exercises -- and sometimes they hung him on a harness from the ceiling.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: And even in the last weeks of his life, he was trying a new method to see if he couldn't get back on his feet. It's either madness or enormously admirable.

Hugh Gallagher, Biographer: He never spoke to anyone about the feelings he had with his paralysis. His mother said that he had never spoken to her about it. Eleanor said he simply didn't accept his paralysis and he didn't talk about it and he wouldn't admit it.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: I suppose psychologists might call it denial. It certainly served him well and allowed him to become President of the United States instead of a stamp-collecting invalid.

Hugh Gallagher, Biographer: Of course it's denial. It worked, and denial's a very useful thing in its place. I mean, it's a way of coming to terms with a difficult fact.

David McCullough: [voice-over] In 1924, Franklin bought a run-down houseboat he named The Larooco, and headed south. He was running away. Drifting lazily off the coast of Florida -- swimming, fishing, cavorting with his friends -- he filled his days with aimless good times.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: He was there partly to exercise and get the sun, which he thought was going to help him -- but he was also there because life at home with five children and his mother and his wife fighting over him was unbearable.

Hugh Gallagher, Biographer: These were very grim years for him, for the family. He was struggling to get better. In spite of his optimism, he really wasn't getting much better. I think that the guy was dealing with depression. There's a great deal of anger, a great deal of grieving, a great deal of frustration that comes with paralysis -- extensive, severe, serious paralysis -- and this is very hard stuff to deal with.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: And he couldn't express that despair and that sadness around Eleanor, certainly not around his mother, nor around the kids, so I think he went to The Larooco originally because it allowed him a haven to be able to be sad, to mourn the loss of the body that once been his, and I think it took longer than he thought.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "There were days on The Larooco," one friend remembered, "when it was noon before he could pull himself out of depression and greet his guests, wearing his light-hearted facade." "Polio was a storm," one of his physiotherapists said, "You were what remained when it had passed." His son James later wrote, "These were the lonely years. We had no tangible father, no father whom we could touch and talk to, only a cheery letter-writer." With Franklin gone and the children away at school or grown up, politics was becoming an increasingly important part of Eleanor's life. Louis Howe convinced her that it was up to her to keep Franklin's name alive. If Eleanor had not stepped forward, Franklin's political career might well have been over.

Eleanor Roosevelt: Louis Howe decided that I better go in the women's division of the state political set-up in New York and I must be able to speak. And so, Louis Howe used to go with me to meetings and sit in the back and make fun of me afterwards.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: Louis Howe is absolutely central to Eleanor Roosevelt's political education. He monitors her every word. He attends all of the speeches that she gives, and he tells her, "You said this right, you said that wrong. You giggled here. Why did you giggle here? Your voice went up 10 decibels here. Why did it do that?" He's really her coach.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: And she very quickly, in two or three years, moved to the top in the women's division in the New York State Democratic Party. She could get up and talk on pretty much any subject and with some ease. And she talked informally. She ran a very good meeting.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Eleanor discovered that she had organizing skills, a talent for dealing with people, and soon found herself in the thick of Democratic Party politics. Publicly, she spoke in Franklin's name. Privately, she was developing her own ideas.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: People go to her for advice, people go to her to raise money. People go to her and ask her to speak. She says in her memoirs she's done it all for F.D.R., but the fact is she loves every minute of it.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: I think she was profoundly impressed and believed in her heart that helping other people, enabling other people -- particularly when you were in a position of privilege -- was the way she wished to conduct her life.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Eleanor was making all the great reform causes of the day her own -- child labor, public housing, workers' compensation, unemployment insurance. She was becoming a voice for those who had none.

Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: She had abdicated her role as wife. She had. He invited her very many times to come down, but he was with the friends whom she didn't especially care for -- the congenial friends, the friends from the Lucy Mercer days, the people who liked to live on a houseboat and swim and drink -- and he was with Missy LeHand.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "Missy" was Marguerite LeHand, Franklin's secretary -- unmarried, Catholic, high school educated, many years younger.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: Missy had started working for Franklin when she was 20 years old in 1920, and I think fell in love with him and never stopped loving him all the rest of her life. It would be Missy who would sit by his side as they went fishing. She learned every activity that he liked and became an expert at it. So she was the perfect companion for these lazy, aimless days on The Larooco. Eleanor is nowhere in sight during this period of time.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Eleanor had now made a life of her own with her own friends. "Alas and lackaday," wrote her aunt, "I just hate to have Eleanor let herself look as she does. Since politics have become her choicest interest, all her charm has disappeared." Franklin supported Eleanor's newfound independence. During the 1920s, they had once again redefined their marriage. They were bound together by politics, respect and real affection, but they led separate lives.

For the first time, Eleanor had a home of her own two miles from Hyde Park, a simple cottage built for her by Franklin. She called it Val-kill after the brook running past its door.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: She can invite who she wants there. Her mother-in-law has to knock before she enters. There are no sliding doors. Sarah is shocked that Eleanor Roosevelt would prefer to live in what she calls "that hovel," rather than the proper house, the big house with the proper number of servants. Eleanor Roosevelt's very happy at Val-kill.

David McCullough: [voice-over] At Val-kill, Eleanor felt free. She defied convention, befriending so-called "new women" who lived with one another. Eleanor found in these friends the kind of emotional closeness that Franklin could not provide. All through the 1920s, Eleanor flourished. She became financially independent, writing articles for newspapers and magazines. She taught at a private school in New York which she co-owned. She continued to campaign for progressive political causes. She traveled widely. She was at ease with herself and for the first time in her life, began to have fun.

Val-kill was Eleanor's, but throughout his life, Franklin was a frequent and welcome guest. Eleanor's friends became his friends, supporting his hopes to one day return to political life. "I don't want him forgotten," Eleanor said. "I want him to have a voice."

In 1924, the former candidate for vice president was invited to the Democratic National Convention. He delivered a rousing speech, but he played no further part in the presidential campaign. He was still far too weak. That fall, there was talk of Franklin running for governor of New York, but he quickly rejected the idea. He would not seek public office, he said, until he no longer needed crutches. Determined to find a cure, he once again headed south.

He had heard of pools of steaming mineral water in Warm Springs, Georgia, whose marvelous healing powers were the stuff of local legend. Gushing out of the side of a mountain, the waters were 90 degrees and astonishingly buoyant. Some called them "miracle waters." Although the waters would never give Franklin back his legs, they would give new meaning to his life and new purpose. "I feel," he wrote his mother, "that a great cure for infantile paralysis and kindred diseases could well be established here."

Elmer Loftin, Warm Springs Resident: Well, there wasn't much here. There was only one hotel downtown, you know, and the grocery store. And they called it "Bullochville."

Robert Fulton Copeland, Warm Springs Resident: It wasn't considered a town, what I would call a town. I thought it took a lot of stores to make a town back in those days. But I just called it a greasy spot, and I think they named it Warm Springs, Georgia after Mr. Roosevelt -- about the time he began to come here.

David McCullough: [voice-over] On the outskirts of town, there stood a once-lovely vacation resort, a favored retreat for wealthy southerners. By the time Franklin arrived, its glory had faded to a cluster of cottages in need of repair and a run-down hotel. Franklin dreamed of restoring its original charm and turning it into a modern rehabilitation center for those with infantile paralysis, but first he would need hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: Roosevelt borrowed a lot of money from his mother and put in a lot of his own. His wife was absolutely opposed and thought it was a terrible idea.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: She thought it was going to cost too much money. She thought that it would give him something else to attend to and take him away from politics, that you couldn't do everything and Warm Springs was going to completely dominate his life. She worried about it.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: One of the few times we know in which he really got angry at her was when she gently suggested that perhaps this was not a good idea. And he was furious.

Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt Biographer: He really exploded and said, "This is something I really want. You either support me or you don't." And when that was sort of an emotional ultimatum, she did support it.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Investing $195,000 -- two-thirds of his personal fortune -- Franklin created and designed the first modern treatment center for infantile paralysis in the country. Soon people with polio from across America were making the pilgrimage to the Georgia back woods. As Franklin struggled to rehabilitate his own withered limbs, he devoted himself for the first time to helping others. "You would howl with glee," he told a friend, "if you could see the clinic in operation and the patients doing various exercises in the water under my leadership."

Hugh Gallagher, Biographer: Warm Springs was a wonderful place. Roosevelt was a patient just like all the others. "Dr. Roosevelt," as the others called him, was really remarkably creative. He brought in blacksmiths and they designed braces and crutches -- a crutch design that's still used, the Warm Springs crutch. Roosevelt invented a muscle-testing technique -- a way of grading how strong a muscle is -- that is still in use, and it was a remarkably inventive time.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Always he believed in recovery. His prescription -- swimming, sunlight and belief on the patient's part that the muscles are coming back.

H. Stuart Raper, M.D., Medical Director, Warm Springs Foundation: He had charisma. He was just glowing with it and oh, that smile, and he'd laugh.

Janice Howe Raper, Physical Therapist: After everybody had treatment, they would all go out into what was called the "play pool," and they would play vigorous games of ball. He played with them and he was just as tough as any of the children. They loved him.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: Whether or not people got better at Warm Springs, they felt that they were better and they felt that with him present, anything was possible.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Warm Springs was Franklin's creation. For the rest of his life, in times of stress he would retreat to the piney woods and the warm waters. It became his second home.

Franklin loved to drive and he drove fast. He designed his car himself, with ingenious levers and pulleys so he could drive without his legs. For the first time since he was paralyzed, he felt free. Over the years, his drives through the Georgia countryside would provide him with a valuable political education.

Ben C. Fowler, Warm Springs Resident: He was interested in the people. He got out and visited with them. Even after he was president, he would slip away from his bodyguards and get out and ride the back ways and back roads and meet people, stop and talk with them. But he'd never met people like that before.

Elmer Loftin, Warm Springs Resident: He usually talked to you. He started the conversation. Whatever he wanted to know, he'd ask. He didn't hesitate about asking if he saw something he wanted to know.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Everywhere he went he heard stories about the lack of electricity in the countryside and the exorbitant rates paid for it in town, about bad schools and low farm prices -- stories that left their mark on him.

Robert Fulton Copeland, Warm Springs Resident: I didn't know how come I loved him like I did. It wasn't -- he hadn't done anything for me personally. We would walk to Warm Springs just to see him just board the train. He'd come on down the --"Hello, Warm Springs. Hello, Warm Springs." That's the way-- we wanted to see him greet the little town, and we walked four miles to see that. Well, he wasn't the President then. He wasn't even the governor of New York, I don't guess, but he was just Mr. Roosevelt in those days.

Janice Howe Raper, Physical Therapist: After he became president, they were very, you know, polite, but they used to call him, in the early days, "Rosie," which I think was a wonderful name.

Robert Fulton Copeland, Warm Springs Resident: Everybody loved him. Go beyond like -- they loved him.

Eleanor Roosevelt: I don't think he changed completely -- there were certain things that were always there -- but he certainly learned to understand what suffering meant in a way that he'd never known before, because he could understand how people could suffer in ways that he had not experienced. And I think that grew out of his polio experience.

And he certainly gained enormously in patience. That gave him some of the patience that was needed to meet the problems both of the New Deal and the war. I've heard people say to him that, "If we do this, we don't know if we will be successful," and I've seen my husband time after time say, "There are very few things we can know beforehand. We will try and if we find we are wrong, we will have to change."

David McCullough: [voice-over] Throughout his long struggle with polio, Franklin remained determined to return to politics, but he knew he would have to convince voters that he was not an invalid, and year after year of arduous exercise had not improved his wasted leg muscles.

Hugh Gallagher, Biographer: He wanted to be President and it was just unthinkable in those days that a person in a wheelchair could be elected President of the of the United States, and in fact it's pretty unthinkable right now. And so he had to walk. And since he wasn't getting better, he developed better techniques for appearing to look better.

David McCullough: [voice-over] In 1926, physiotherapist Alice Converse taught Franklin how to walk more effectively with crutches.

Alice Converse, Physical Therapist: He was very anxious to walk. He would plant the crutches on the floor so hard you would think that the boards would break, and then drag himself along. It had been five years since the onset of polio. His upper body was very strong, but his legs were pretty weak, so we tried to get him to use his body muscles in such a way that they would help lift up a leg at a time and take a step.

David McCullough: [voice-over] But crutches weren't good enough. He knew they were political poison. They would, he said, inspire pity. He learned instead to appear in public with a cane.

Hugh Gallagher, Biographer: And he developed this technique that looked like walking. His sons were strong men -- they took exercises so their arms would be as strong as a parallel bar -- and he would lean on one son's arm, putting all his weight on it, and then he would switch his weight from the son's arm onto a cane which he carried in the other hand so that he could switch his weight from side to side and thus progress. And he instructed his sons, "You must not let people see that this is difficult or takes effort or it hurts." They would chat and joke and laugh as they went along -- it was a slow process -- but they looked as though they were taking their time so they could smile at people and say hello to the crowd as they went along. And it was show biz, but it worked.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Only four seconds of film exist which clearly show the walk Franklin so tirelessly practiced.

Geoffrey Ward, Biographer: The goal, really, was simply to take enough steps to get from a car into a building, or from his seat on the stage to the podium and back again. If he could do that without seeming hopelessly crippled, he'd succeeded.

Hugh Gallagher, Biographer: Roosevelt had no hip muscles, and if a breeze, or someone should jostle him, something like that, he could just pivot and fall down. He was not stable at all. It was not a safe way of locomotion, of moving around. It was not a practical way, but it was a political way.

David McCullough: [voice-over] By the summer of 1928, Franklin was ready at last to make his way back into the political world. The Democratic Convention was in Houston and Eleanor had written him, "I'm telling everyone you're going to Houston without crutches." As he boarded the train for Texas, he knew he was about to risk everything.

All through the 1920s, Franklin had kept up his contacts with Democratic Party leaders. Now he'd been asked to nominate the governor of New York, Al Smith, for president. Smith was a tough, worldly Catholic from New York City, and one of his advisors argued, "You're a Bowery mick and he's a Protestant patrician. He'll take some of the curse off you."

With 15,000 delegates watching, Franklin set out to walk to the podium with a cane, without the aid of crutches. An accidental fall would leave him sprawled helplessly on the convention floor, his political hopes destroyed. With one hand he gripped the cane. With the other, he balanced precariously on his son Elliott's powerful arm. He appeared to be walking. One reporter described the scene: "Here on the stage is Franklin Roosevelt, a figure tall and proud even in suffering, pale with years of struggle against paralysis, a man softened and cleansed and illumined with pain. For the moment we are lifted up."

Franklin D. Roosevelt: We offer one who has the will to win, who not only deserves success, but commands it. Victory is his habit -- the happy warrior, Alfred E. Smith.

David McCullough: [voice-over] The nomination was Al Smith's but the victory belonged to Franklin Roosevelt. When Smith urged him to run for governor of New York, Roosevelt said he was ready. Someone asked Smith why he'd put Roosevelt back in the political limelight. "Aren't you raising up a rival who will one day cause you trouble?" "No," Smith replied, "he'll be dead within a year." Six months later, Smith had lost his run for the presidency and Roosevelt was governor of New York. Roosevelt won office by the slimmest of margins, campaigning more vigorously than anyone expected. Now, as governor, he would continue to surprise everyone. He took command at once. In his first six months, he advocated tax relief for farmers and cheap electric power for consumers, but when disaster suddenly struck the economy, no one was sure what Roosevelt would do.

On October 24, 1929, the stock market crashed. It was the beginning of the worst calamity the United States economy had ever known. Banks closed, millions were put out of work. Homeless people were soon camping just a few blocks from the townhouse Sarah Roosevelt had built for Franklin and his bride years before. Eleanor gave instructions to the cook to provide anyone who came to the door with hot coffee and sandwiches.

David Ginsburg, F.D.R. Administration: There's only one word that adequately describes it and that's surely despair -- a sense of helplessness, a sense of hopelessness. About a third -- imagine, a third -- of labor totally unemployed, 14 million people. There was a sense of fright, a sense of horror. It was a feeling that what was happening? Was it possible that something like this could occur in the country?

David McCullough: [voice-over] Since the start of the Depression, the Republican President, Herbert Hoover, had settled into a dismal pessimism. After one gloomy White House meeting, his secretary of state said, "It was like sitting in a bath of ink to sit in his room." Hoover believed there was nothing he could do to turn the economy around. The crisis would have to resolve itself without the aid of government.

At first, Roosevelt agreed with Hoover. "Industrial and trade conditions are sound," he wired a newspaper the morning after the crash. But as the crisis deepened, Roosevelt began to change. All his life, he had believed that relief should come from private charities, but face to face with the problems of the Depression, he became convinced that only massive government intervention could help. For the first time, Roosevelt began to experiment with bold new ideas -- assistance for the aged and the country's first program to provide relief for the unemployed. "The important thing," he told the New York State Assembly, "is to recognize that there is a duty on the part of government to do something about this."

In 1932, President Hoover invited the nation's governors to a White House dinner. With his presidency in jeopardy, he wanted to size up the man from New York with the progressive programs, who was rapidly becoming the Democratic front-runner.

Alonzo Fields, White House Butler: And the night of the dinner, with a cane in his hand, he started going to the dining room, dragging his legs from his hips and supporting himself on the cane and his bodyguard's arm. And he walked at the angle, a 45-degree angle, to the table. And I was alerted to a nod that was telling me he was going to take the seat. Well, when he did, he literally fell in the seat, and that scene was witnessed by all the guests at the dinner table. And everybody said, "Well, that man, what is he thinking about? How is he going to be president? He's only a half-man."

David McCullough: [voice-over] On July 1, 1932, after five tension-filled days at the Democratic National Convention, the delegates rallied behind the man who had fought his way back from despair.

Convention Speaker: Franklin D. Roosevelt, having received more than two-thirds of all the delegates voting, I proclaim him the nominee of this convention for President of the United States.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Now. F.D.R. was ready to begin the race he had been preparing for all his life.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democratic Presidential Nominee: This is more than a political campaign, it is a call to arms. Give me your help not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people.

David McCullough: [voice-over] He refused to let his crippled legs keep him from running hard and with confidence.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: I used to say, "If I go to Washington on the 4th of March next," but now at the -- very nearly the end of this swing, I am not saying "if," I'm saying "when."

Pres. Herbert Hoover: The great war against depression is being fought on many fronts in many parts of the world.

David McCullough: [voice-over] His Republican opponent, the President of the United States, appeared overwhelmed by the Depression. One observer remarked, "If you put a rose in Hoover's hand, it would wilt."

Eli Ginzberg, F.D.R. Administration: He gave the impression to the American public that he was just out of control, and Roosevelt gave the impression that he knew what the country needed and he was going to give it to them.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: We face that crisis. We face it with singleness of purpose and above all with faith. Keep that faith constant, keep that faith high. So shall we win through to a better day.

David McCullough: [voice-over] In spite of the crisis the country faced, it was a campaign of personalities. Americans wanted a leader and people everywhere warmed to the big smile, the confident toss of the head, clear delight in people. When it was over, Roosevelt had won a smashing victory.

William Leuchtenburg, Historian: By midnight, the country already knew that Franklin Roosevelt was the winner and a very large winner. One man sent Herbert Hoover a wire, saying, "Vote for Roosevelt and make it unanimous."

Pres.-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt: Let me thank you again and tell you that I hope to see you all very soon and bid you an affectionate good night.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "I was happy for my husband," Eleanor later wrote. "I knew that it would make up for the blow that fate had dealt him when he was stricken with infantile paralysis. But for myself, I was deeply troubled. This meant the end of any personal life of my own. The turmoil in my heart and mind was rather great that night."

It would be four months before Roosevelt would take office, the worst months yet of the Depression. Five thousand banks closed. Each month, 20,000 farmers lost their land. The economy had collapsed. Americans everywhere waited for the president-elect to tell them what he was going to do, but Roosevelt gave no clues.

William Leuchtenburg, Historian: At one point, reporters asked him a question and he simply holds up his finger and goes, "Shh." He will not be drawn out.

David McCullough: [voice-over] One month before the inauguration, Roosevelt went cruising in the Caribbean with his wealthy friends on Vincent Astor's yacht, the biggest and fastest ocean-going motor yacht ever built. During the campaign, he had promised what he called "a new deal for the forgotten man," but as yet he had said nothing about what that new deal might be. Meanwhile, Eleanor was expected to give up her teaching and writing to become the nation's first lady.

Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady: To get together -- and you are here -- and forget that there is such a thing as a depression for a time and forget all the troubles that weigh us down and simply sing is a grand thing to do.

David McCullough: [voice-over] On March 2, 1933, with the Roosevelts on board, the Baltimore & Ohio train headed toward Washington. In two days, Franklin Roosevelt would become the 32nd President of the United States. Eleanor sat quietly by herself. She feared she was about to lose her hard-won independence. "I never wanted to be a president's wife," she said, "and I don't want it now."

The President-elect's mother Sarah was, as always, confident in her boy. "I am not in the least worried about Franklin," she told a friend.

In the last car, Franklin Roosevelt sat alone. "In all the years I knew him," his son James wrote, "there was only one time when Father worried about his ability. It was the night he was elected President. 'You know, Jimmy,' he said to me, 'all my life, I have been afraid of only one thing -- fire. Tonight I think I'm afraid of something else.' 'Afraid of what, Father?' I asked. 'I'm afraid that I may not have the strength to do the job.'"

On March 4, 1933, a man who could not walk would begin to lead the crippled country.

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt: I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.

FDR, Night Two

David McCullough: [voice-over] "In all the years I knew him," Franklin Roosevelt's eldest son remembered, "there was only one time when my father worried about his ability. It was the night he was elected president."

On March 2, 1933, as a Baltimore & Ohio train sped from Hyde Park, New York toward Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat all alone in the last car. In two days, this man with legs crippled by polio, whose greatest strength seemed to be his charm, would become the 32nd President of the United States.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Over 70 years before, Abraham Lincoln had traveled by train to his inauguration to lead a country about to be torn apart. Now, Roosevelt would have to face the nation's gravest crisis since the Civil War. Fourteen million Americans were out of work. Nine million had lost their life savings. The economy had collapsed.

Eli Ginzberg, F.D.R. Administration: People were down and out in their feelings, not only in their stomachs and in their pocketbooks. It was a tremendously depressing period of time. There were not a few people who really saw the possibility that the country was going to disintegrate.

David McCullough: [voice-over] The train clattered through New Jersey where Newark had defaulted on its payroll and rolled on through Pennsylvania and Maryland, where the banks were closed. Halfway across the country, Iowa farmers threatened to hang a lawyer foreclosing on their farms, and in Detroit, men who had lost their jobs were stealing food from grocery stores.

As the president-elect's train pulled into Washington's Union Station, no one knew what to expect from this man who had promised "a new deal for Americans."

Chalmers Roberts, Journalist: The country was in a hell of a mess, and everybody was looking to this new man to do something about it. They didn't know what. His promises had been all over the lot, but action, action, action was what they were looking for.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "If the New Deal is a success," a friend told Roosevelt, "you will be remembered as the greatest American president." "If I fail," Roosevelt replied, "I will be remembered as the last one."

Inauguration Day began with a service at St. John's Episcopal Church, with hymns selected by Roosevelt himself. His Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, described the scene. "We were in a terrible situation," she wrote. "Banks were closing, the economic life of the country was almost at a standstill. If ever a man wanted to pray, that was the day. He did want to pray and he wanted everyone to pray for him."

The weather was cold and bleak. General Douglas MacArthur had prepared his troops for a possible riot. On his last morning in office, President Herbert Hoover said, "We are at the end of our strength. There's nothing more we can do."

Hoover detested Roosevelt, thought him an opportunist, sure to drag the country even deeper into despair. On the ride to the Capitol, Roosevelt tried to make conversation, but Hoover sat stony-faced. "The two of us simply couldn't sit there on our hands, ignoring each other and everyone else," Roosevelt recalled, "so I began waving my top hat, and I kept waving it until I got to the inauguration stand." "It was very, very solemn," Eleanor Roosevelt told reporters later, "and a little terrifying. The crowds were so tremendous and you felt that they would do anything if only someone would tell them what to do."

As he made his way to the podium, Roosevelt appeared to be walking, but it had taken years of practice to perfect that illusion. In fact, he was pressing down on his son's arm with an iron grip, propelling himself forward with the help of a cane and his powerful upper body. Americans everywhere waited.

William Leuchtenburg, Historian: One has to imagine millions of people clustered around their radio sets in towns all across the country. They don't know what to expect of this new president -- he's not shown them much yet -- and then they hear, coming through their loudspeakers, this voice --

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt: This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.

William Leuchtenburg, Historian: -- so filled with courage, with self-confidence, with a sense of leadership.

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt: This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

David Ginsburg, F.D.R. Administration: Suddenly this man came in and he made clear to the country that there was really nothing to fear except the fear that was in one's own heart.

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.

Eli Ginzberg, F.D.R. Administration: The country was so excited that one had a live leader finally, at long last in the White House, that he could have suggested we all get ready to walk to the moon and we would have followed him. It was just an unbelievable change in mood.

William Leuchtenburg, Historian: It has an electrifying effect. Nearly a half a million people write to him. This is unheard of. American presidents in the past generation have gotten as few as 200 letters in a week. Now, nearly a half a million write to Franklin Roosevelt and overnight he establishes himself as the leader that the country has been looking for.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "Dear Mr. Roosevelt, I am writing to you for help. We have eight children to take care of and nobody working but my husband. He's getting such little pay for his work and we have a sick child. Please, Mr. Roosevelt, don't let them take our home away from us. Please, sir."

"Dear Mr. Roosevelt, I have never as yet begged, but I would appreciate some kind of help. I have always put up a good fight and have worked many a day until I was almost unable to stand up, but all to no avail."

March 4, 1933 -- Roosevelt's first day in office. With the banks closed, investment at a standstill, many Americans believed that the free enterprise system was failing. One aide wrote, "We were confronted with a choice between an orderly revolution or a violent overthrow of the whole capitalist structure." Roosevelt could hope, like Hoover, that the economy would repair itself or he could try something that had never been done before in America -- intervene on a massive scale with the power of the federal government.

Robert Nathan, F.D.R. Administration And I had a professor that taught the course in business cycles, and I remember he reached in his pocket and took a rubber band out and he held it and then he pulled it and he said, "This is boom." And then he let go of one end, it snapped back, he said, "Bust." And he says, "This happens to a capitalistic economy and you can't do anything about it. Let nature take its course." And Roosevelt, of course, brought around him a lot of people that didn't believe that bunk and thought you got to do something to turn it around.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Roosevelt's advisors offered him a range of programs. In the end, he would work from no systematic plan. Instead, he would experiment.

William Leuchtenburg, Historian: "Try one idea and if it doesn't work, we'll try another." He likened himself to a quarterback. You try a play. If that play doesn't work, you turn to another play.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "It is common sense," Roosevelt said, "to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another, but above all, try something." In his first 100 days in office, Roosevelt managed to put tens of thousands of people back to work. He pledged billions to save their farms and their homes from foreclosure. He provided relief to unemployed. He restored confidence in the banks and guaranteed the savings of millions of Americans.

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt: I can assure you that it is safer for you to keep your money in a re-opened bank than to keep it under the mattress.

David Ginsburg, F.D.R. Administration: His key was somehow to prop up capitalism. That was unquestionably in back of his mind, but he was a pragmatist. He was seeking to find solutions to the practical problems that beset people today. The banks were closed -- get the banks open.

David McCullough: [voice-over] And to sell the centerpiece of his program, the National Recovery Administration, he orchestrated an extraordinary publicity campaign. The NRA was designed to tame the unruly cycles of American capitalism by encouraging business and government to work together. Each industry was allowed to set its own wages and prices. Labor was promised the right to bargain collectively.

Alistair Cooke, Journalist: I went to the top of the Empire State Building on a day in, I think, June 1933. There was this enormous National Recovery Act parade, you know with -- they had this symbol, the blue eagle, everywhere. It was on cigarette packages, in stores and so on. It was an immensely moving thing. I mean, there must have been two million people, it seemed like, up and down Fifth Avenue and everywhere, all just cheering, and the country just lifted itself up.

Chalmers Roberts, Journalist: This was a great thing that was happening. The country was coming out of this incredible mood. Roosevelt was changing national despair to hope.

Dick Powell, Actor: [NRA featurette] [singing] There's a new day in view / There is gold in the blue / There is hope in the hearts of men. / All the world's on the way / To a sunnier day / For the road is open again.

David McCullough: [voice-over] When the hundred days were over, Roosevelt had signed 15 major bills into law and created an alphabet soup of new government agencies. "We have had our revolution," one magazine reported, "and we like it."

Eli Ginzberg, F.D.R. Administration: Everything was up for grabs in a country that was basically a conservative country, but now had a leader to whom anything and everything was possible. The least ideological person that ever lived -- that's why I think he was such a great success.

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt: A few timid people who fear progress will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it fascism and sometimes Communism and sometimes regimentation and sometimes socialism. But in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical.

I believe in practical explanations and in practical policies.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Roosevelt used the radio to speak directly to the American people and they listened to his "fireside chats" as if he were a close friend.

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt: In the present spirit of mutual confidence, the present spirit of mutual encouragement, we go forward.

David McCullough: [voice-over] By the end of 1933, many of Roosevelt's most skeptical critics had been converted. An aide who worked with him during the Wilson years marveled, "That fellow in there is not the fellow we used to know. There's been a miracle here." If Roosevelt ever had any doubts about his ability to do the job, they evaporated quickly. The White House, which for some presidents was a prison, was for F.D.R. home.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: Oh, I think there's no question that Roosevelt loved being president. You know how he used to say, "I love it?" I suspect if somebody said to him, "How do you like being president?" that's what he would have said, "I love it." It just seemed to fit his temperament. I have a feeling he loved getting up in the morning, loved going to his office, enjoyed the people that came in. I can't imagine another president being more suited for the presidency and enjoying it as much as Roosevelt did.

William Leuchtenburg, Historian: Roosevelt believed that he belonged in the White House. His idea of who a president should be was himself as president. He thought it was the grandest job in the world.

David Ginsburg, F.D.R. Administration: This was a man of great ebullience. He was a man of constant cheer. He was a man of cigarettes. It would be a constant flow of laughter and jokes. There was never a moment that one had a feeling that he suddenly felt helpless or suddenly uncertain of what to do. He knew what to do and he would do it.

Alistair Cooke, Journalist: He was immensely cunning, and what people had not realized was his extraordinary guile. I mean, I think he was quite capable of telling what Winston Churchill called "a terminalogical inexactitude" and never blush. And he had this marvelous face of, you know, total, placid sincerity and earnestness and he had a great gift of seeming to think that you were about the wisest man that he'd ever consulted on anything until you found he had no use for you the moment you left.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Franklin Roosevelt had always imagined himself as president, but the White House was the last place Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to be. "I never wanted to be a president's wife," she said, "and I don't want it now." By 1933, Eleanor and her husband were leading all but separate lives. Fifteen years earlier, Roosevelt's affair with Eleanor's social secretary Lucy Mercer had ended the intimacies of their married life, but they had developed a political partnership and Eleanor had built a life of her own.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: My grandmother had real reservations about moving into the White House. She knew the social role. She knew how all-consuming it could be. She had become a figure in her own right, and within the Democratic Party even somewhat of a power. And the thought of going to Washington -- she was appalled.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: All she saw was social, ceremonial jobs which she hated. She always said she was never good at small talk. I'm sure she imagined that in the First Ladyship she'd be talking small talk for all the years they were in there.

David McCullough: [voice-over] "At the first few receptions," Eleanor wrote, "my arms ached, my shoulders ached, my back ached. I was lucky in having a supple hand which never ached. I realized," she said, "that if I remained in the White House all the time, I would lose touch with the rest of the world."

Edna Gurewitsch, Roosevelt Family Friend: She wanted her freedom. She didn't want to be curtailed by protocol, by being the wife of the head of a government. She wanted to pack up her bag, get into her little car and go out into the country.

David McCullough: [voice-over] During her husband's first year as president, Eleanor traveled more than 40,000 miles, reporting back to the White House on the New Deal.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: Never before had a first lady taken to the road and traveled hundreds of thousands of miles on her own, supporting her husband. What she was looking for was the human detail that she could bring back to her husband to let him understand what the people of his land were thinking, feeling and hoping.

Chalmers Roberts, Journalist: She became his legs. She became his emissary. She could go places that he couldn't go, and she went everywhere.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Eleanor wrote a daily column, called "My Day," held weekly press conferences, received hundreds of thousands of letters. Her popularity ratings were sometimes even higher than her husband's.

Alonzo Fields, White House Butler: He could make a great speech, but Mrs. Roosevelt went out and intermingled with the people. Well, she would sometimes pick up someone off the street and bring him in for lunch, and she would invite people to the White House to dinner for a state dinner. And they had never had a tuxedo on in their lives and they'd come there and on track and no tuxedo and they're supposed to be at the dinner, say, "What will we do?" We would take them to the locker where we had supplies of uniforms for the butlers and fit them out in that.

David McCullough: [voice-over] The woman who never wanted to be first lady revolutionized the role. More and more, Eleanor became the White House advocate for women, factory workers, tenant farmers, blacks, often pressing her husband to move faster than he was prepared to move.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Biographer: Eleanor sent so many memos into his bedroom at night that after a while he had to create an "Eleanor" basket just to hold all these memos. And then, after a while, he had to make a deal with her, saying, "Eleanor, three memos a night -- not 12, not 20, not 30. I will initial them and deal with them by morning." Sometimes she kept her bargain, but my sense is that more than three went in there many nights.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: What they had together -- our grandmother and grandfather -- was what I call a creative tension. They both basically believed in the same things, but they had different roles to play. He had to work with the Congress. He was President of the United States, which meant not the liberals in the United States. It meant everybody in the United States.

She was able to influence issues and he was delighted, but he could also disown her and did with the press. He would say, "Well, you know my missus. I don't dictate what she says," or, "I don't control her." He was very charming about it, but in a way it was just a, "Oh, she can say what she likes, that doesn't represent my position," which was very, very convenient -- very convenient for him to, through her, sense how far he could go.

David McCullough: [voice-over] By 1934, Roosevelt had been president for a year, yet in spite of all his New Deal programs, hard times persisted.

David Ginsburg, F.D.R. Administration: The Depression was too deep. The origins, the roots of the problem were too deep.

David McCullough: [voice-over] The government had spent over $2 billion for relief, but thousands of new people were forced on the welfare rolls each day.

William Leuchtenburg, Historian: The numbers of people who are on welfare rise to a quarter of an American city. One reporter in 1934 comes upon a couple living in a cave in Central Park in New York. And there was a sense that the New Deal, although it had improved things greatly from the worst days of the Great Depression, was not really getting the country back to prosperous days again.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Despair turned to anger. Violent protests and strikes swept across the country. Bewildered and frightened, many Americans were drawn to agitators calling for reforms more radical than Roosevelt's. Father Charles Coughlin, a maverick Catholic priest from Detroit, turned radio into a pulpit from which he blasted the New Deal, demanding a living annual wage and nationalization of the banks.

Father Charles Coughlin, National Union: Who then is the inflationist -- Roosevelt or the National Union?

David McCullough: [voice-over] Francis Townsend, a retired California doctor, galvanized millions of supporters by advocating a plan for old-age pensions. And Senator Huey Long from Louisiana, with his "Share Our Wealth" program, had his eye on the presidency. "I can take him," Long said of Roosevelt. "He's scared of me. I can out-promise him and he knows it. His mother's watching him and she won't let him go too far. He's living on an inherited income. People will believe me and they won't believe him."

Roosevelt's consensus was beginning to unravel. During the euphoria of his first 100 days in office, even Republicans had supported him. Now they turned against him.

Henry B. Fletcher, Chairman, Republican National Committee: The New Deal is government from above. It is based on the proposition that the people cannot manage their own affairs and that a government bureaucracy must manage for them.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Republicans charged that government was becoming too big and too intrusive.

Henry B. Fletcher, Chairman, Republican National Committee: We do not want to see these alphabetical bureaucratic agencies become permanent fixtures in our national political life.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Roosevelt grew increasingly frustrated as business began to accuse him of meddling with free enterprise. When he regulated the stock exchange and the banks, the captains of American industry were outraged.

Eli Ginzberg, F.D.R. Administration: They thought he had come in, he had done a very good job, those first 100 days were all right, but now he should give us a chance to take back and run the country as we always had been accustomed to running it. He had a different idea about that.

David McCullough: [voice-over] With the election just two years away, the attacks on Roosevelt became more intense than ever. Angry businessmen founded the Liberty League, dedicated to stopping further New Deal legislation.

Alistair Cooke, Journalist: The discovery of what a political wizard he was was what fired a lot of hatred of Roosevelt, because they'd thought of him as somebody they could manipulate -- a splendid, well-meaning, rather genteel type. That's what they thought. Then they discover they have an absolute master politician, mischief-maker, cunning man and they hated him all the more because they'd been fooled.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Then, on May 27, 1935, a day New Dealers would remember as Black Monday, the Supreme Court struck at the very heart of Roosevelt's hope to stimulate the economy. They declared the NRA -- the National Recovery Act -- unconstitutional, and it was just the first blow. The court was moving against Roosevelt's efforts to abolish child labor, establish a minimum wage, boost farm prices. Law by law, the court would attempt to dismantle the work of the first 100 days. But with millions still unemployed, Roosevelt continued to use the power of the federal government to relieve the suffering caused by the Great Depression.

William Leuchtenburg, Historian: Congress, at Roosevelt's request, enacts the Emergency Work Relief Appropriations Act, which is the largest single peacetime appropriation in the history of this country or any country in the history of the world.

Newsreel Announcer: New York City -- federal jobs for thousands at the rate of a hundred a minute, while all over the nation, Works Progress administrators are hurrying to transfer millions of idle from relief rolls to work payrolls.

Dispatcher: One thirty-eight Greene Street, New York, tomorrow morning 9 o'clock. Municipal Building, Borough Hall, Brooklyn tomorrow morning, 9:00.

David McCullough: [voice-over] Five billion dollars went to the Works Progress Administration, the WPA. Men and women hired by the government worked on more than 5,000 schools, 2,500 hospitals, 1,000 landing fields, 13,000 playgrounds. Even artists went to work for the WPA.

But for Roosevelt this was just the beginning. He would bring power to rural America where nine out of every 10 families still lived without electricity. For millions of Americans -- impoverished children, the unemployed, the elderly with no savings, the disabled -- he offered the Social Security Act. He sold it as an insurance policy for everyone, but the poor, Roosevelt was saying, had rights too.

David Ginsburg, F.D.R. Administration: The great tradition in the United States had been private charity, community charity. Families take care of their own and so the notion that somehow the government would take care of the poor or the unemployed or the old -- this is something that was just not part of our tradition. We didn't know of it.

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt: This Social Security measure gives at least some protection to 30 millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.

David McCullough: [voice-over] By the end of his first term, Roosevelt had begun to shift the balance of power in America. The rich felt the sting of higher taxes and workers acquired the right to bargain collectively. Soon great American industries -- steel, rubber, automobiles -- would be unionized for the first time, and the men F.D.R. grew up with, who went to Groton and Harvard, had begun to say, "That man in the White House has gone too far."

Bronson Chanler, Hudson Valley Neighbor: People from Franklin Roosevelt's class when he first was elected had no idea that he was going to anything as radical as he did do. They really believed that because he was one of them, more or less -- propertied and coming from old New York society -- that the last thing he would do would be anything that would cause anguish to his peers.

Curtis Roosevelt, Grandson: People who held a position in society that was basically inherited and family-oriented instinctively felt that this was being lost and that "that man in the White House," Franklin D. Roosevelt, was responsible and hence he was a traitor to his class.

They hated him, and I know this from my personal experience of people who would come up to me, not just when my grandfather was alive, but ever since, but particularly, say, in the 10 or 15 years after he died, and express their vitriolic hate towards Franklin D. Roosevelt in a way that is totally irrational.

Bronson Chanler, Hudson Valley Neighbor: A great yachtsman in Marblehead, Mass., Mr. Crowninshield, when he -- on entering in his log book of his yacht a description of something really terrible, he'd refer to it as "a Roosevelt." "It was blowing an absolute Roosevelt that day and the fog was thicker than a Roosevelt," 'cause he used the word Roosevelt -- I mean, it seems ridiculous, but that was the extent to which these people took their hostility to the New Deal.

David McCullough: [voice-over] The rich and the privileged might hate him, but as his first term was drawing to a close, Roosevelt remained immensely popular with ordinary Americans. In spite of persistent hard times, the President had given them hope.

Alistair Cooke, Journalist: The most astounding thing was the pictures of Roosevelt you saw -- framed photographs, framed bad watercolors, good photographs, bad photographs -- but everywhere. Bus stations, libraries, barbershops, homes -- there were pictures of Roosevelt.

I went into this lodge and as we were checking in, I looked and saw this photograph, you know, where the clerk was checking us in, and it was rather bad. It had been -- very bad color with sort of rouged cheeks. And I made a joke about this, you know, the way they'd done him up, and we were throw out. Now, that was the striking thing. It had nothing to do with partisanship. You know, for the time being, the entire country's decided he was the savior.

I don't believe five Americans in a hundred knew he was paralyzed. I think if it had been absolutely common knowledge, it would have been very difficult to elect him.

Hugh Gallagher, Biographer: The country just simply didn't perceive Roosevelt as being handicapped, and they would look and they just would not see what they were seeing. People wanted him to be president, he wanted to be president. There was this little matter of being crippled in the way.

The President was always performing. He was performing before crowds, before visitors of state, the Congress and so forth, but also for his family and everyone else. When he met Orson Welles, he said, "Orson, you and I are the two best actors in America," and he was right, you know. He was right.

He's appearing in public. It's politically important that he not look helpless. He's got to plan how will he enter a room? How will he move across to the chair? Who will help him sit down? How will he do it? Who will take the cane? How -- do they know? Is the chair stable?

Milton Lipson, Secret Service: We became experts at designing ramps, and there would be ramps that would be erected either on a permanent or temporary basis to allow for the wheelchair. Of course, there were times when he would be helped by a couple of agents in a fireman's carry, and all he would do was drape his arms around us and we'd form a fireman's carry and carry him.

Hugh Gallagher, Biographer: For large crowds, they would build a ramp for the car, so the car would come into the stadiums, drive up on the ramp and then the President, sti