FDR AND THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
Subject Area
U.S. History
Unit/Topic and OC3
FDR and the Role of Government
OS 3.3
Reading Standard: A. Key Ideas and Details
CC Literacy Standard
and Objective
Grade: 11
1. Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and
secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin
of the information.
2. Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary
source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas
develop over the course of the text.
Writing Standard: A. Text and Purposes
1. Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.
b. Develop claim(s) and counterclaims fairly, supplying data and
evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and limitations
of both claim(s) and counterclaims in a discipline-appropriate form
CC Literacy Standard
and in a manner that anticipates the audience’s knowledge level
and Objective
and concerns.
c. Use words, phrases, and clauses to link the major sections of the
text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships between
claim(s) and reasons, between reasons and evidence, and
between claim(s) and counterclaims.
Source(s): Documents, Images Objective One: Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Speech (below)
Objective Two: Four Freedom Speech (below)
Objective One: SOAPS
Developing Main Idea Graphic Organizer
Instructional Strategies
Objective Two: Venn Diagram
Venn Variation
Analyzing an Image
Lesson Ideas Using Instructional Strategies: This lesson relates to the duties and powers of the
president and Congress as set forth in the Preamble, in Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 18, and in Article II,
Section 3, Paragraph 1, that resulted in measures to provide for national relief from the economic disaster
of the Great Depression.
1. Objective One: Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Speech (Copy listed below)
Analyzing the Document:
Provide students with a copy of the inaugural address. Ask them to read it and underline any words
that reflect a metaphor for war. For example, on page 1 the words "convert retreat into advance" would
be appropriate. Direct student pairs to compare and discuss their findings.
Group Research
Ask students to list components of President Roosevelt's plan to attack the Great Depression as stated
in his inaugural address. Copy these components onto a sheet of Post-It paper and post in the
classroom. Next, provide students with a list of New Deal programs. Use examples from the
documents cited in this lesson (the CCC, the WPA, the FERA, and the TVA) and add others that you
deem appropriate. Assign small groups of students to research one of the programs to determine
whether it addressed one of the issues specified in the speech and included on the posted list. Finally,
direct the groups to report their findings and discuss whether their program had any connection to the
military metaphor used within the speech.
Essay
Ask students to write an essay in which they analyze the war powers clauses included in the
Constitution and compare them to the tone of the speech and the development of the New Deal
programs.
2. Objective Two: Four Freedoms Speech
President Roosevelt was a gifted communicator. On January 6, 1941, he addressed Congress,
delivering the historic "Four Freedoms" speech. At a time when Western Europe lay under Nazi
domination, Roosevelt presented a vision in which the American ideals of individual liberties were
extended throughout the world. Alerting Congress and the nation to the necessity of war, Roosevelt
articulated the ideological aims of the conflict. Eloquently, he appealed to Americans` most profound
beliefs about freedom.
Read and analyze the Four Freedoms Speech (Copy listed below)
Students may work independently or in small groups. Distribute copies of the speech to students with
a graphic organizer such as SOAPS, Main Idea organizer or one of your preference.
Analyze Norman Rockwell’s Illustrations (Copies below with questions.)
Divide students into 5 small groups. Give the first four groups one painting of Rockwell's; the fifth has
all four paintings. This gives some groups the opportunity to look at one painting in detail, and the last
a chance to look for patterns and commonality between all of them. Students will need a Analyzing an
Image form.
3. Comparing Both Speeches
Complete a Venn diagram based on the main ideas of both speeches. Copy of Venn diagram is
below.
President Roosevelt’s 1st Inaugural Address
“I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them
with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time
to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions
in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first
of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning,
unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance….
In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only
material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen;
government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the
currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for
their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great
number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor
who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who
respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.
If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our
interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go
forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline,
because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know,
ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a
leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind
upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.”
The "Four Freedoms"
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Address to Congress
January 6, 1941, Eighth Annual Message to Congress
[excerpt]
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential
human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want -- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings
which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear -- which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of
armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an
act of physical aggression against any neighbor-- anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time
and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the
dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception -- the moral order. A good society is able to face
schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.
Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change -- in a perpetual peaceful
revolution -- a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions -- without
the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of
free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.
This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women;
and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights
everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our
unity of purpose.
To that high concept there can be no end save victory.
From Congressional Record, 1941, Vol. 87, Pt. I.
Illustration One:
Questions
1. Who is in the painting? What’s happening?
2. What freedom is illustrated in this painting?
3. Does this illustrate a freedom to do something, or freedom from something?
Illustration Two:
Questions
1. Who is in the painting? What’s happening?
2. What freedom is illustrated in this painting?
3. Does this illustrate a freedom to do something, or freedom from something?
Illustration Three
Questions
1. Who is in the painting? What’s happening?
2. What freedom is illustrated in this painting?
3. Does this illustrate a freedom to do something, or freedom from something?
Illustration Four
Questions
1. Who is in the painting? What’s happening?
2. What freedom is illustrated in this painting?
3. Does this illustrate a freedom to do something, or freedom from something?
Collection of All Four
Questions
1. Who is in all of these paintings?
2. Where are these paintings happening?
3. What commonalities can be found in each document?
FDR’s 1st Inaugural
Address
FDR’s Four Freedoms
Speech