Franklin D. Roosevelt Inaugurated as President

Context

By early 1933 the United States had endured more than three years of deepening economic crisis that began with the stock-market crash of 1929. Banks failed by the thousands, factories stood idle, and unemployment hovered above one-quarter of the workforce, leaving millions without wages or savings. President Herbert Hoover’s administration had tried limited measures such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, yet public confidence remained low and the economy continued to contract.

Franklin D. Roosevelt had defeated Hoover in the November 1932 election by promising bold experimentation. The long interval between election and inauguration—more than four months under the old constitutional schedule—left the country in a state of uncertainty while state governments and the outgoing administration struggled to contain bank runs. The Twentieth Amendment, ratified in January 1933, would shorten future transitions, but it came too late to affect the 1933 ceremony.

Roosevelt’s incoming team prepared an ambitious agenda of relief and reform, while Americans watched to see whether the new president would deliver on his campaign rhetoric of energetic leadership.

What Happened

On Saturday, March 4, 1933, Roosevelt rode with Hoover from the White House to the Capitol in an open car under gray skies. Before a crowd gathered on the East Portico, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes administered the oath of office first to Vice President–elect John Nance Garner and then to Roosevelt. In his inaugural address the new president told the nation that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” and sketched plans for immediate federal action.

Later that same afternoon the Senate confirmed Roosevelt’s cabinet nominees. Among them was Frances Perkins, his choice for secretary of labor. That evening the full cabinet gathered at the White House, where Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo administered their oaths. Perkins thus became the first woman ever to serve in a presidential cabinet.

The day’s events unfolded against a backdrop of closed banks in many states and urgent telegrams from governors seeking federal help. Roosevelt’s team worked through the night on emergency banking legislation.

Aftermath

Within forty-eight hours Roosevelt declared a national bank holiday and called Congress into special session. The resulting “Hundred Days” produced a torrent of legislation that created the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and other early New Deal agencies. Perkins immediately began shaping labor policy, pressing for unemployment insurance, minimum wages, and the abolition of child labor.

The swift sequence of executive and legislative moves restored a measure of public confidence and shifted the center of economic decision-making from state capitals and Wall Street to Washington.

Legacy

Roosevelt’s inauguration inaugurated the New Deal era, in which the federal government assumed permanent responsibility for stabilizing the economy, regulating banks and securities, and providing a basic social safety net. Perkins’s cabinet service set a precedent for women in high executive office and laid the groundwork for the Social Security Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The Twentieth Amendment ensured that no future president would face such a prolonged lame-duck period, while the event itself remains a touchstone for interpretations of how crisis can accelerate institutional change. Historians continue to debate the New Deal’s long-term effects on American federalism and the balance between relief and recovery.