This Day in American History

Jan. 6, 1941 – In his State of the Union speech before Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt prepared a still deeply isolationist nation for the prospect of war. In an attempt to move the nation away from a policy of neutrality in World War II, he sought to persuade Congress to pass the Land-Lease Act by giving Britain badly needed weapons they could not afford to pay in exchange for naval bases. The address, more commonly known as the “Four Freedoms” speech, became one of the President’s most famous. The freedoms he outlined – freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear – became the basis of a famous series of paintings done a few years later, after American entry into the conflict, by Norman Rockwell.