Introduction

Abstract

Abstract Handwritten draft of the American Legion’s proposed “Bill of Rights for GI Joe and GI Jane,” enclosed in a flag-surrounded display case in the American Legion Library in Indianapolis. The portrait is of Harry W. Colmery, who wrote the draft. (Courtesy American Legion Library) In July 1995 President Bill Clinton spoke at a commemorative service in Warm Springs, Georgia, soon after the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Looking back on FDR’s long and remarkable presidency, Clinton identified as its “most enduring legacy” an achievement that came neither from the Hundred Days of initial New Deal legislation nor from the structural reforms of the Second New Deal, nor even from FDR’s successful prosecution of World War II. Rather, Clinton pointed to the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944—the GI Bill—a law passed late in Roosevelt’s presidency, following his initiatives but shaped by many others besides himself. The GI Bill, Clinton observed, “gave generations of veterans a chance to get an education, to build strong families and good lives, and to build the nation’s strongest economy ever, to change the face of America.” This one piece of legislation, he continued, perhaps with an eye to his own presidential legacy, “helped to unleash a prosperity never before known.” It was a New Deal for veterans and, through them, for the postwar nation as a whole.