Lincoln's Greatest Case: The River, the Bridge, and the Making of America

by Brian McGinty

  The Cincinnatian was the first lawyer to read depositions to the jury. He started on Wednesday morning, the second day of the trial, reading depositions that established that the Afton was owned by Hurd, Kidwell, and Smith, and that it was licensed and enrolled by the United States surveyor of customs at Cincinnati on November 22, 1856.18 He then continued with other more interesting transcripts.

  One was that of James W. Connor, a steamboat pilot from New Albany, Indiana, who had been a pilot on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers for fifteen or sixteen years. Connor was asked how the erection of the Rock Island Bridge had “affected the navigation of the Mississippi River at the place,” what “class of boats were in the habit of navigating it where the bridge crosses it,” and whether steamboats could navigate the river there “with barges or crafts in tow.”19 These questions elicited a quick objection from Norman Judd, who reminded Judge McLean that the Bridge Company had been sued because of the loss of the steamboat Effie Afton and not because barges had difficulty passing through the draw of the bridge. Judd did not object to questions tending to show that the bridge had been built at an angle to the current of the river and that the angle had caused the loss of the Afton. “But when you ask ‘Can boats navigate that draw with barges?’ I say it is not competent, because you have not said you have been lost by such obstruction.”20 Responding, Wead and T. D. Lincoln argued that the questions were proper because they were included in the general allegations of the declaration, while Joseph Knox and Abraham Lincoln argued that they were not.21 Because much of what was said during the trial was not reported verbatim in the newspaper accounts, we can only speculate what Abraham Lincoln said on this point. It is reasonable to assume, however, that his argument was persuasive, for after a long period of discussion and reflection Judge McLean sustained Judd’s objection. The questions asked were too general, the judge ruled. The plaintiffs could not claim to recover for the Afton’s loss “because a boat having barges has not been able to pass the draw.” They could only claim to recover because of the specific loss actually suffered.22

  McLean’s ruling permitted T. D. Lincoln to continue reading Connor’s deposition, but without the objectionable questions. Connor’s recorded testimony revealed that on May 11, 1857, he had been on board a steamboat named the Tennessee Belle that was coming down the river on a trip from Galena to St. Louis when he saw another vessel, a steamboat named the Saracen, approach the bridge. The Saracen headed for the draw and, as it was about to enter, collided with the long pier of the span. The impact broke some of the Saracen’s chain braces and “made her leak pretty badly.” About ten minutes later, as Connor’s own boat approached the draw of the bridge, it also collided with it. The Tennessee Belle “struck the short pier first,” Connor said, “and then darted to the long pier, striking that. It tore off all the larboard guard on the larboard side—took off the knuckle streak, and on the starboard side carried off some thirty feet of her guard.” The Tennessee Belle was detained at Rock Island for three weeks while it was repaired. The collisions of the Saracen and the Tennessee Belle convinced Connor that the angle at which the bridge had been built had the effect of throwing boats “against the pier as they tried to pass through the draw.” It made the river current so strong that in high water it was “impossible for any ordinary boat to go through without having all the steam that can be got, and even more than the law allows them to carry.”23

  More steam, of course, provided the boats with greater power and speed, but at the risk of potentially disastrous boiler explosions. (Mark Twain’s younger brother, Henry Clemens, was badly scalded when a boiler exploded on a steamboat he was working on below Memphis in 1858, and he died soon thereafter).24 The maximum pressure permissible in steam boilers was prescribed by Congress and enforced by federal inspections.25 Connor thought the need for extra steam made the Rock Island Bridge “very dangerous in this respect, as often the only alternative presented to heavy loaded boats is to break the law, by carrying an extra head of steam, or to abandon their trips, or at great expense unload and have it towed along the shore in barges.”26

  About a week after the Tennessee Belle accident, Connor saw another steamboat—this named the Arizonia—strike the long pier at Rock Island and sink. He also saw the Isaac Shelby unload its cargo and have its freight hauled along the shore because of its inability to pass through the Rock Island draw. Connor admitted that he had gone through the draw only two times and that when he went up the river in his own boat he encountered no difficulty. It was only when he was coming down that his boat struck the pier. “The long pier acts like a funnel,” Connor said, “drawing in more water to the draw than ought to go through such a space. . . . I consider it more dangerous than any other place on the Ohio or Mississippi Rivers.”27

  Connor’s powerful indictment of the bridge was quickly followed by similar testimony. Robert Herdman, who lived in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, was a river captain who had command of the steamboat Arizonia when it collided with the Rock Island Bridge. “It was Sunday morning about six, or half past six,” Herdman said, “and just at the entrance the current drove the boat on the head of the long pier. The boat striking the pier on the starboard guard and knuckle, knocking off about twenty-six foot of the guard and knocking the stern post out. She bounded off and went through. She commenced taking water fast, but we forced her as fast as possible, and she sunk at Rock Island.” Herdman considered the bridge “a very serious obstruction and a very dangerous one.”28

  William Fuller of Cincinnati had been a river pilot for twenty-one years and a steamboat captain for three. His deposition revealed that he was in command of the steamboat General Pike when it collided with the Rock Island Bridge on June 7, 1857, sustaining damage that had to be repaired at St. Louis. Fuller described the water that collected at the long pier, creating eddies and currents, and said he had never known a boat attempting to pass through the bridge without a “high pressure of steam.” Fuller thought the bridge was “a very serious obstruction to the navigation of the river.” It is “so dangerous,” he said, “that I would not venture through it a second time, though I had every prospect of a fine trip.”29

  Pleasant Devinney of St. Louis was captain of the steamboat Grace Darling when, on the day before the Effie Afton disaster, it made several unsuccessful attempts to pass through the draw of the bridge. Devinney was on hand the following day when the Afton crashed into the bridge and burned. “She went in as pretty as a boat could go,” Devinney said, “and I thought she would succeed in getting through.” He soon learned otherwise. “Her head passed the short pier. The cross-current from the long pier hit her on the larboard bow and threw her on the head of the short pier forward of her wheels.” Soon the current “took her right down under the bridge and keeled her over until the water was over her larboard guard. She then took fire and was finally destroyed.” Devinney was sure that the bridge was “a very serious obstruction.” In fact, he “never knew anything equal to it.”30

  The third day of the trial, Thursday, September 10, opened with yet more depositions from the plaintiffs’ attorneys. The witnesses were unanimous in declaring the bridge a serious obstacle to navigation of the river, though they offered different opinions as to how the obstacle might be removed. John Grammar of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, a veteran pilot on the Upper Mississippi, thought the solution might be to replace the existing drawbridge with a suspension bridge.31 (Was Grammar aware of the furor that the steamboat interests on the Ohio River had directed against the suspension bridge at Wheeling, Virginia, only a few years before?). Thomas Parker, a steamboat pilot who had passed the location of the Rock Island Bridge on an average of twenty times a year over a period of sixteen years, thought that the only way to avoid the obstruction was to “remove it.”32 George McClintock of Pittsburgh, captain of the steamboat Henry Graff, which was thrown against the long pier at Rock Island when it attempted to pass through the bridge on April 21, 1856, and later sank at Rock Island City, thought the draw
span should be widened (the draw “should be as wide as the other spans,” he said) and the piers should be set “straight with the current.”33 (Of course, such “modifications” could be accomplished only by demolishing the existing bridge and building a new one.)

  Tales of the grief that steamboats encountered at Rock Island continued. George McLean of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, was captain of the steamboat Argonaut when it came through the Rock Island Bridge on the day after the Afton was lost, striking the long pier and sustaining minor damage. He gave live testimony in which he blamed the angling piers of the bridge for the mishap.34 Frank T. Batcheler of Cincinnati, commander of the W. L. Maclay, a steamboat that was badly damaged when it came through the Rock Island Bridge on May 2, 1856, was another live witness. He thought it was “very difficult to enter the draw straight.” “There is a great danger of swinging,” Batcheler added, “and then there is no time nor space to catch her up.”35

  Bilbe Sheppard of Bellevue, Iowa, a millwright who was a passenger on the Afton on the day she was lost, gave live testimony in which he vividly described the Afton’s collision with the bridge. “As the boat went into the draw,” Sheppard said, “I felt a jar as though the stern had struck the center pier. The whole boat had got in beyond the end of the long pier. I saw the bow then springing toward the center pier, to the right. They stopped the wheel I think on the right hand side, on the starboard side. The boat then straightened up, but came more against the current, and commenced swinging round toward the small pier.” Sheppard thought it was “but a short time” between the collision with the bridge and the burning of the Afton. “It did not exceed half an hour,” he said.36

  Cephas B. Gall, a river pilot with twenty years of experience who was a witness to the damage suffered by the Henry Graff and the W. L. Maclay, gave a deposition in which he declared that it was “generally necessary to have all the steam that the law allows to get through the draw,”37 while Peter Hall of Davenport, a river pilot who had been acquainted with the Mississippi at Rock Island since 1836, gave live testimony in which he emphatically declared the bridge “an obstruction to navigation.”38

  The newspaper accounts of the trial, hastily transcribed and hurriedly rushed into print, left much of the give-and-take of the courtroom drama unreported. Binmore’s reports for the Missouri Republican were more detailed than Hitt’s for the Chicago Press, but neither transcribed every word that was said in the courtroom. Both were content from time to time to summarize points they considered marginally important and eliminate those they considered obvious, repetitious, or merely trivial.39 Witnesses’ names were often spelled differently in the two newspapers.

  Some of the color and drama of the Effie Afton courtroom was remembered many years later by a Chicagoan who witnessed a good part of the trial and published a short recollection of it in the Century Magazine for February 1897.40 Francis G. Saltonstall was a stock and bond broker who had been alerted to the proceeding by John F. Tracy, superintendent of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad. “Our case will be heard in a day or two,” Tracy told Saltonstall. “You had better look in; I think it will interest you.” Inside the courtroom, Saltonstall noted that “much time was taken up by testimony and contentions between counsel; and as the participation of the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce was openly charged, great interest was manifested in the evidence and in the manner in which it was presented. As the character of the Mississippi River was described—the nature of its currents, their velocity at certain periods, the custom of navigators and pilots in allowance for drift, the depth of water at the ‘draw’ of the bridge, the direction of the piers in relation to the channel, and many other points involving mechanics and engineering being drawn out—the spectators showed their sympathies unmistakably.”41

  When Saltonstall recalled the trial in later years, it was natural that he should note Abraham Lincoln’s presence in the courtroom and completely overlook that of T. D. Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln had by that time attained the status of a national hero, and it was understandable that men who had known him, or merely seen or heard him in person, would delight in recounting their memories of him. Saltonstall remembered that during the Afton trial, Lincoln “seemed to have committed all the facts and figures to memory, and often corrected evidence so effectively as to cause a ripple of mirth in the audience.” The courtroom in the Saloon Building was “crowded day after day.”

  “During a tedious examination by one of the opposing counsel,” Saltonstall said, “Mr. Lincoln rose from his chair, and walking wearily about—this seemed to be his habit—at last came down the aisle between the long benches toward the end of the room; and seeing a vacant space on the end of the bench which projected some distance beyond the stove, came over and sat down.” Saltonstall continued: “Having entered the room an hour before, I sat on the end, but, as Mr. Lincoln approached, moved back to give him room. As he sat down he picked up a bit of wood, and began to chip it with his knife, seeming absorbed, however, in the testimony under consideration. Some time passed, when Lincoln suddenly rose, and walking rapidly toward the bar, energetically contested the testimony, and demanded the production of the original notes as to measurements, showing wide differences. Considerable stir was occasioned in the room by this incident, and it evidently made a deep impression as to his comprehension, vigilance, and remembrance of the details of the testimony.”42

  Particulars of Lincoln’s conduct during the trial may have been hazy when Saltonstall recorded his recollections (an attorney who interrupts the testimony of a witness being questioned by another attorney to correct his facts is at least stretching the rules of courtroom decorum), but his memory of Lincoln’s whittling rang true. Whittling was in fact one of Lincoln’s favorite pastimes. He neither smoked nor drank nor swore, so if this was a vice—or just a rather messy habit—it was forgivable.43

  NINE

  A Chorus of Protests

  Joseph McCammant of Cincinnati was one of the most important witnesses in the trial, for he was the chief pilot of the Effie Afton on the Ohio and Lower Mississippi Rivers, although he did not have charge of the boat after it headed north from St. Louis. McCammant had been a river pilot between St. Louis and New Orleans for about twenty years before the Afton met its grief at Rock Island. When the boat reached St. Louis, however, Nathaniel Parker, a pilot experienced in navigation on the Upper Mississippi, was employed to take it north to St. Paul. McCammant’s testimony included a long description of the Afton’s collision with the bridge. “I was standing in the pilot house during the whole time that she struck,” he testified. “The striking was caused by the force and the direction of the current, and the cross-currents that are created by the long pier.” The jolt was felt the length of the vessel, upsetting stoves throughout the cabins, cook house, barber shop, and bakery. “It was not over ten minutes or at most fifteen, after she struck before she was burning all over. . . . Boats on the Western waters are all built very light and dry, and there is a good deal of paint and varnish on them, which makes them burn almost like shavings.” McCammant said that he was “personally observant of the conduct of all the officers of the Afton,” and there was “no want of care and skill on their part in attempting to pass the draw.”1

  David Brickel and Henry White of Pittsburgh offered strong support for McCammant’s testimony. Brickel was the captain of the J. B. Carson, the steamboat the Afton passed in its rush to enter the draw of the Rock Island Bridge on May 6, 1856. In his judgment, the Afton was “carefully navigated.”2 White had been a pilot on the Upper Mississippi for twenty years and had passed the point where the Rock Island Bridge crossed the river an average of eighteen times a year. He was the pilot of the steamboat Lucie May when it struck the long pier at Rock Island on April 6, 1857, suffering damage that cost a thousand dollars to repair. White believed that the bridge was “an obstruction” and that “any pier bridge would be an obstruction, if built at that point.” But the force of his condemnation of the bridge was weakened when he revea
led that he had made nine trips from St. Louis to St. Paul on the steamboat Minnesota Belle, that he had passed through the Rock Island Bridge on all of those trips, and that “no accidents ha[d] happened to any of the boats except the Lucie May.”3

  Nathaniel Parker, the pilot in charge of the Afton when it struck the bridge, did not testify until the second week of the trial, but when he did so he added some compelling detail to the plaintiffs’ case. “I was at the wheel when the Effie Afton was lost,” Parker told the jurors. “I have been a pilot for the past twenty-two years between St. Louis and Galena and St. Paul.” When Parker got to Rock Island on May 5, 1856, “there were ten or eleven boats laying above and below the bridge.” Parker and his assistant pilot, Samuel McBride, were both in the pilot house when the Afton set out for the draw of the bridge on May 6. “We first struck the right hand pier,” Parker said. “We came in fair with the current. I think her larboard wheel got in the eddy of the long pier and that made her strike first.” Parker said it was more difficult to take a side-wheel boat through the bridge than a stern-wheeler. “I did all that I could to safely navigate that boat, and so far as I know, the engineers were at their posts; everything, so far as I know, went on skillfully and properly.”

  Parker was asked if he had attended the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce’s meeting of December 16, 1856—the meeting at which plans were discussed for a consolidated attack on the Rock Island Bridge. He answered that he “was at a meeting in St. Louis to make a survey of the bridge and rapids. It was in January last.” A series of heated questions and objections followed. “Was not a part of the object of that meeting a prosecution of this suit?” Parker was then asked. “Perhaps it was,” he answered, “but the primary object was to bring a suit to abate the bridge as a nuisance.”4