A famous speech was given at the close of the Democratic convention that was held in that city, at Franklin Field, on June 27, 1936. Let’s hear from Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s The Politics of Upheaval pages 584-585::
The ocean of faces stretched out illimitable into the darkness and the applause came back wave after wave, while Roosevelt, his poise regained [he had fallen just beforehand] smiled and waved. He began his speech with sober thanks for the sympathy, help, and confidence with which the nation had sustained him in his task.
Roosevelt laid out the case for a new kind of freedom:
Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.
These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.
Towards the end came the most famous part:
Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales.
Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
Schlesinger:
… the applause, thundering up from the audience against the dark sky, overwhelmed his last words. “The greatest political speech I have ever heard,” said Harold Ickes; and most of those present agreed. For ten minutes the shouts and cheers went on. Then, as the President stood with his mother and family around him, the orchestra played “Auld Lang Syne”. Roosevelt called for the song again , began singing himself, and soon the whole stadium joined him.
Presently the President returned to his car. The car circled the stadium’s track, Roosevelt erect and waving, to an intense and sustained ovation. Even after he had left the grounds, most of the crowd remained, as if in a sort of trance. Then silently they dispersed into the soft summer night.
Well, here it is. Right now there is nearly 50/50 proposition that the government will pass into the hands of a conspiracy theorist bully who is an admirer of dictators. We have our own rendezvous to make.