President Franklin D. Roosevelt

On a gray March afternoon in 1933, as a cold rain fell on Washington and banks failed across the country in a kind of slow-motion collapse, Franklin Delano Roosevelt rode in an open car toward the Capitol, his head high, his jaw set in that familiar, confident line. Around him, the city was tense. Unemployment had reached heights Americans had never seen. Breadlines looped around city blocks. Farmers lost their land; factory whistles fell silent. In the weeks before the inauguration, the financial system itself had begun to buckle. State after state declared “bank holidays” to stem panicked withdrawals. By the morning of March 4, the entire banking structure of the United States was functionally frozen.

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