[237] In July 1940, a group of Congressmen introduced a bill that would authorize the nation's first peacetime draft, and with the support of the Roosevelt administration, the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 passed in September. The size of the army increased from 189,000 men at the end of 1939 to 1.4 million men in mid-1941.[238] In September 1940, Roosevelt openly defied the Neutrality Acts by reaching the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, which, in exchange for military base rights in the British Caribbean Islands, gave 50 WWI American destroyers to Britain.[239]

Election of 1940
Main article: 1940 United States presidential election
In the months prior to the July 1940 Democratic National Convention, there was much speculation as to whether Roosevelt would run for an unprecedented third term. The president was silent, and even his closest advisors were in the dark.[240]  The two-term tradition, although not yet enshrined in the Constitution,[j] had been established by George Washington when he refused to run for a third term in the 1796 presidential election. 