The special sessions of Congress that changed America

On July 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln defined the seceding southern states as aggressors, and issued his call to arms. “It is now recommended that you give the legal means for making this contest a short, and a decisive one; that you place at the control of the government, for the work, at least four hundred thousand men, and four hundred millions of dollars,” he announced to Congress. “... A right result, at this time, will be worth more to the world, than 10 times the men, and 10 times the money.”

Woodrow Wilson had been reelected in 1916 under the slogan, “He kept us out of war.” But in early 1917, a renewal of submarine warfare and the leaked “Zimmerman Telegram” pushed Wilson to ask a special session of Congress to bring the U.S. into the brutal European war. “We have no selfish ends to serve,” Wilson said. “We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind.”

With the unemployment rate at 25 percent and the banks on the verge of collapse, Franklin Roosevelt called the first of three special sessions during his presidency. On its first day, Congress unanimously passed Roosevelt’s banking bill without even reading it. What followed was the greatest flurry of legislative productivity in American history, known as the “100 Days.” Congress passed all 15 historic pieces of legislation that the president proposed.

In the isolationist spirit of the 1930s, the U.S. passed neutrality laws that banned any arms sales to countries at war. In 1939, Roosevelt called his third special session in order to repeal these bans, so as to aid America’s European allies. “I give to you my deep and unalterable conviction, based on years of experience as a worker in the field of international peace,” the president declared, “that by the repeal of the embargo the United States will more probably remain at peace than if the law remains as it stands today.”

But not all special sessions whip the nation up into grand collective action. Some special sessions have been serious duds.

President Franklin Roosevelt hoped to pass landmark labor legislation in the special session he called in November 1937. But no luck. The country was teetering on the edge of the recession, the Senate got distracted by an anti-lynching bill, the president became “ill of an infected tooth” before leaving on a fishing trip, and the bill was dogged by union in-fighting. But in regular session the following year, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage, a 44-hour work week (which later become 40), overtime pay and banned child labor.

Harry Truman is the last president to call a special joint session in 1948, in an attempt to battle the soaring cost of living. Republican leaders called it a “flagrant abuse” of presidential powers, and Senator Eugene Millikin seethed: “This Congress will never rubbstamp Left-Wing schemes for more spending and more Government control of everything in America." That “no-good, do-nothing 80th Congress,” as Truman called it, ignored most of the president’s inflation-fighting proposals.