What Americans Thought of the Roosevelts During the Depression

Introduction: Letters from a Desperate Nation

It is humbling and even awe-inspiring to read between the lines of the letters written to President and Mrs. Roosevelt during the early years of the Great Depression. In an election year that proved so divisive to the American populace and provoked such widespread cynicism, letters such as these seem to come from another world — another nation — where the president's wife is a friend and the president himself is a friend and savior. One such letter, addressed to the First Lady by a Kansas housewife in 1934, begins simply: "My dear Friend." (McElvaine 218–222)

The author addresses this politician's wife — a woman from an entirely different social class and milieu, whom she has never met nor is likely to meet — as an intimate and companion. "Just listened to the address given by your dear husband, our wonderful President." (McElvaine 218–222) Roosevelt's policies are given short shrift in this letter, suggesting that people responded more to Roosevelt's persona than to the specifics of his programs during the initial phase of his New Deal.

Roosevelt as Friend and Savior

Clearly, Americans during this era of economic despair needed and expected a friend who they felt could help them. They found such a friend in the image of Roosevelt. They were looking, to put it plainly, for a good man — a saving man, a kindly father, and a confidant. As one letter writer put it: "When I received this fine picture my dear mother (who has since been called Home) said to Delores, 'Who is this man?' and Delores answered without hesitation, 'Why who else, but Saint Roosevelt' . . . Indeed we all feel if there ever was a Saint, He is one. As long as Pres. Roosevelt will be our leader under Jesus Christ we feel no fear. His speech this morning showed he feels for the 'least of these.'" (McElvaine 218–222)

Feeling low, this woman looks to a Christ-like figure to lift the lowly and restore hope. Her letter captures a quality that appears again and again across this collection: the sense that Roosevelt represented not merely a political leader but a moral and spiritual force in the lives of ordinary Americans.

Religious and Parental Imagery in the Letters

One man writes to the First Lady as though Roosevelt embodies both masculine and feminine qualities in an almost godlike fashion: "strange to say when he was speaking to see the moistened eyes and deep feeling of emotions that gave vent to his every word, and when you spoke then we knew that the White House would be filled with a real mother to the nation." (McElvaine 218–222) Expectations are high and yet vague — so powerful is the president's force of personality and his ability to inspire trust.

The rhetorical and deeply felt blend of familiarity and holy veneration that the American populace felt for Roosevelt continues in the Kansas letter. The writer concludes: "I am enclosing a snap shot of the dear little girl who acclaimed our President a Saint and rightly so . . ." and closes with a homey warmth: "with all good wishes for you and your fine family." (McElvaine 218–222)

This mingling of the sacred and the domestic — saint and neighbor, savior and family friend — is one of the most striking features of these letters. Eleanor Roosevelt herself appears not as a distant political consort but as a "real mother to the nation," suggesting that the couple together embodied an idealized American family writ large.

Roosevelt's Mastery of Radio and Media Presence

One of the reasons for this extraordinary familiarity may be that Roosevelt was the first president to command the medium of radio with skill and regularity. One letter writer describes the experience vividly: "my family and I were sitting around the radio to hear, and we heard you when you flew over N.Y. and entered the great hall, and when he spoke it seems as though some Moses had come to alleviate us of our sufferings. I am, or glad to say in this thought you have not failed us — you have visited the slums, the farms, and homes of your people, and formed firsthand ideas for their benefit." (McElvaine 218–222)

Through his fireside chats and radio addresses, Roosevelt entered the living rooms of millions of Americans at their most vulnerable. His voice — calm, patrician, reassuring — created an intimacy that no previous president had achieved. The radio transformed him from a distant governmental figure into something closer to a household presence.