An extra session of Congress seemed specially desirable at the time, and had one been summoned by the President, many of the troubles which subsequently resulted might have been averted. The propriety of ordering an earlier assemblage of the Thirty-ninth Congress than that already provided by the Constitution had been discussed to a very considerable extent among the members of the Thirty-eighth, as its final adjournment (March 3, 1865) approached. The rebellion seemed tottering to its fall, and it was the belief of many of the leading men both of the Senate and the House, that it might be a special advantage if Congress should be in session when the final surrender of the Confederate forces should be made. But the prevailing opinion was in favor of leaving the matter to Mr. Lincoln's discretion. It was felt by the members that if the situation should demand the presence of Congress, Mr. Lincoln would promptly issue his proclamation, and if the situation should not demand it, the presence of Congress might prove hurtful, and would certainly not be helpful. The calamity of Mr. Lincoln's death had never entered into the public mind, and therefore no provision was made with any view of its remotest possibility. Mr. Johnson, however, is scarcely to be blamed for not calling an extra session of Congress. Aside from his confidence in his own power to deal with the problems before him, he shared, no doubt, in the general dislike which Presidents in recent years have shown for extra sessions. Indeed, to the Executive Department of the Government, Congress, even in its regular sessions, is a guest whose coming is not welcomed with half the heartiness with which its departure is speeded. But an extra session, especially at the beginning of an Administration, is looked upon with almost superstitious aversion, and is always to be avoided if possible. It was remembered that all the woes of the elder Adams' Administration, all the intrigues which the choleric President fancied that Hamilton was carrying on against him in connection with our French difficulties, had their origin in the extra session of May, 1797. It was remembered also that the unpopularity which attached to the Presidency of Mr. Madison was connected with the two extra sessions which his timid Administration was perhaps too ready to assemble. So deeply was the hostility to extra sessions implanted in the minds of political leaders by the misfortunes of Adams and Madison that another was not called for a quarter of a century. In September, 1837, Mr. Van Buren inaugurated the ill-fortune of his Administration by assembling Congress three months in advance of its regular session. John Tyler in turn never recovered from the dissensions and disasters of the extra session of May, 1841,--though it was precipitated upon him by a call issued by President Harrison. All those extra sessions except the one in Mr. Van Buren's Administration