U.S. #930
1¢ FDR and Hyde Park
Issue Date: July 26, 1945
City: Hyde Park, NY
Quantity: 128,140,000
Printed by: Bureau of Engraving and Printing
Printing Method: Rotary Press
Perforations: 11 x 10.5
Color: Blue green
U.S. #930 was issued as part of a series of four memorial stamps issued just a few months after President Franklin Roosevelt’s unexpected death in April 1945. This stamp commemorates Franklin Roosevelt and the place of his birth, Hyde Park, NY. He lived at Hyde Park until enrolling in preparatory school at the age of 14.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt – America’s Only Four-Term President
Elected President four times, Franklin Delano Roosevelt served in the nation’s highest office longer than any other chief executive – 12 years. He was born on January 30, 1882, in Hyde Park, New York, the only child of a wealthy family. Roosevelt graduated from Harvard in 1904, and then studied at Columbia Law School.
In 1910, Roosevelt was elected to the New York state senate. He was appointed assistant secretary of the navy in 1913. Roosevelt was stricken with polio in 1921. Although permanently disabled, he remained active in politics. In 1928, Roosevelt was elected governor of New York, and was re-elected in 1930. As the Great Depression ravaged America in 1932, he was elected President over Herbert Hoover.
Roosevelt took office at a time of great economic turmoil in the United States. By 1933, the four-year-old Depression was taking a large toll on the country. Unemployed workers lost their homes. Thousands more were forced to stand in bread lines because they could not afford to pay for food.
As the Depression progressed, anxious investors rushed to get their money from the banks. Many banks were unable to meet this demand and were run out of business. This, in turn, caused more investors to pull out of banks, causing more banks to fail. On March 6, 1933, just two days after taking office, President Roosevelt imposed a “bank holiday” and closed all the banks in the United States. When each bank was inspected by the Department of the Treasury and determined to be sound, it was re-opened. This increased the public’s confidence, because of the belief that if a bank was re-opened, it was safe.
On March 9, 1933, President Roosevelt called a special session of Congress in an attempt to help ease the Depression. During this session, called the “Hundred Days,” Roosevelt introduced an aggressive package of reforms aimed at getting the economy back on track. “The New Deal” contained such important programs as the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National Industry Recovery Act, the Works Projects Administration, and the Civilian Conservation Corps. In addition, Congress passed the Social Security Act of 1935 and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
As the election of 1940 approached, Europe was in the midst of a great war. Americans felt that the same President who was leading them out of the Depression should lead them through this time of international turmoil. President Roosevelt was elected for an unprecedented third term in office. Roosevelt intended to give the allied forces all aid short of joining in the war. However, on December 7, 1941, Japan bombed the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The following day the United States declared war on Japan. Three days after that, Germany and Italy, Japanese allies, declared war on the United States. World War II would become the most costly war in American history up to that time.
Although Roosevelt did not want to run for President a fourth time, he felt it was his duty to run, thereby avoiding a wartime change in leadership. He was re-elected easily. However, Roosevelt would not live out his fourth term. On April 12, 1945, while sitting for a portrait at his retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia, the President complained of a terrible headache. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage a few hours later. Roosevelt is buried in the rose garden of his home in Hyde Park, New York.
Casablanca Conference
On January 14, 1943, Allied leaders met in Casablanca, Morocco, to discuss the next stage of World War II.
The conference was a secret. Days before the meeting, President Franklin Roosevelt boarded a train going north to make journalists think he was going to his upstate New York estate. Instead, he secretly switched trains in Baltimore and rode down to Miami to catch a plane. This made Roosevelt the first president to fly in an airplane while in office, and the first to leave American soil during wartime.
From there Roosevelt had a long journey ahead of him – 10 hours to Trinidad and Tobago, nine hours to Para River, Brazil, 19 hours over the Atlantic to the Gambia, and 11 hours to Casablanca. He finally arrived on the evening of January 14, five days after leaving the White House. That night Roosevelt and Winston Churchill stayed up until 3 am discussing strategy.
Also present at the conference were Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud. Joseph Stalin had been invited, but he declined because he had to focus his attention on the ongoing Battle of Stalingrad.
The main purpose of the conference was for Roosevelt and Churchill to plan their military strategies for the next year. They planned to have their militaries draw Germany away from the Eastern Front, and would increase the number of supplies they were sending to the Soviet Union. They also decided to launch an invasion of Sicily, with the goal being to remove Italy from the war. At the same time, the Allies would start assembling troops in England for a landing in Northern France.
Additionally, the Allies would also increase their strategic bombing against Germany. In the Pacific Theater, they agreed on a plan to remove Japan from Papua New Guinea and open up new supply lines to China through Burma. They also agreed to name Dwight D. Eisenhower Supreme Commander of Allied Forces.
One of the major outcomes of the conference was the decision that the only way to ensure peace after the war was to institute a policy of unconditional surrender. Roosevelt said that the policy was not intended to destroy the populations of the Axis powers, but instead “the destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based on conquest and the subjugation of other people.”
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