Second Inaugural Address

Summary

Franklin Roosevelt took his second oath on 20 January 1937, the first inauguration held in January under the Twentieth Amendment, in a cold rain on the East Portico. He had just carried forty-six of forty-eight States. The speech looks back to March 1933, when the Republic stood "single-minded in anxiety," and asks whether the country has reached its goal. The first half is an argument about government. Americans had pledged to drive "from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it," and they had learned that democratic government could protect people against "economic epidemics" as medicine had learned to master epidemics of disease. Roosevelt ties the New Deal to the Constitution's 150th anniversary: the founders created powers "sufficient then and now" for problems beyond local solution. Power is safe, he argues, not when it is absent but when it rests with officials the people can remove at elections, and "private autocratic powers" must be brought into subordination to the public's government. The greatest change of the past four years, he says, has been in "the moral climate of America." The second half asks whether to stop. Personified Comfort, Opportunism, and Timidity counsel rest. Roosevelt answers with a series of sentences beginning "I see": millions on meager incomes, millions in indecent housing, millions denied education, until the line "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." He paints the picture "in hope," because the nation, seeing the injustice, means to "paint it out." The measure of progress is "whether we provide enough for those who have too little." He closes by promising to seek "Divine guidance" to "give light to them that sit in darkness and to guide our feet into the way of peace," words from the canticle of Zechariah in Luke. Weeks later he proposed enlarging the Supreme Court, and the speech's claims about lodging power with the people became part of that fight.

Top Lessons

• The test of progress

  Roosevelt proposes a single standard: progress is measured not by adding to the abundance of those who have much but by providing enough for those who have too little. The sentence makes the condition of the poorest the measure of national success.

• Power answerable to the people

  Roosevelt argues that the safety of democracy depends "not upon the absence of power, but upon lodging it with those whom the people can change." Critics of the New Deal, and soon of the Court plan, replied that constitutional limits exist precisely because elections alone do not restrain power. The lesson is a chance to state both sides fairly.

• Temptations of prosperity

  Roosevelt warns that "Dulled conscience, irresponsibility, and ruthless self-interest already reappear," and that prosperity tests reform more than crisis did. He personifies Comfort, Opportunism, and Timidity as voices urging the nation to stop.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Presidential inaugurals concern constitutional politics and national crisis; they have no medical content for this library's lens.