"I never saw him - but I knew him. Can you have forgotten how, with his voice, he came into our house, the President of these United States, calling us friends..." - Carl Carmer, April 14, 1945.
In the midst of the Great Depression, America in 1933 was suffering. One-third of its work force was unemployed, every bank had been closed for eight days, and the public was barely surviving through a combination of barter and credit.
On Sunday evening, March 12, a troubled nation sat down by its radio sets to listen to their president. With his calm and reassuring voice, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt explained how the nation was going to recover from the current banking crisis. That evening marked the beginning of the historic Fireside Chats, thirty-one radio addresses that covered issues like the renewed Depression and our role in World War II. In his Fireside Chats, Roosevelt shared his hopes and plans for the nation and invited the American people to "tell me your troubles."
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