5. The first railroad bridge to cross the Mississippi, the Rock Island Bridge opened for traffic between Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, on April 22, 1856. This artist’s view shows Davenport in the background. The draw span, in the lower right, rotated to allow steamboats to pass up and down the river. Barges, as shown in the foreground, could pass under the stationary spans. The steamboat Effie Afton crashed into the bridge on May 6, 1856, caught fire, and sunk, but not before it destroyed a part of the bridge.
6. Another artist’s view shows a steamboat passing down the river from Rock Island. Indians, some of whom remained in the area after the Black Hawk War, watch. The Rock Island Bridge and Rock Island are in the background.
7. As opened in 1856, the Rock Island Bridge rested on eight stone piers, two that rested on the river banks and six that rose from its bed. Five stationary spans, two on the Illinois side and three on the Iowa side, were built of timbers on the patented Howe truss design, with curved arches added on each side for additional strength and stability. Between the stationary spans, a draw span rotated atop a long pier to permit steamboats to pass through the bridge. Technical drawing by William Riebe from the Rock Island Digest, 1982.
8. St. Louis was the throbbing center of steamboat traffic on the Upper Mississippi in 1855, the year before the steamboat Effie Afton crashed into the Rock Island Bridge. Steamboat owners and the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce provided financial and strategic support for the ensuing lawsuit against the bridge owners.
9. Chicago was a small but rapidly growing railroad center at the foot of Lake Michigan in 1856, the year the Effie Afton crashed into the Rock Island Bridge. Although smaller than St. Louis, the Illinois city was recognized as a menace to St. Louis’s domination of transportation in the Middle West because of its rail connection with the Rock Island Bridge. The Effie Afton trial was officially titled Hurd et al. v. The Railroad Bridge Company, but it might as well have been St. Louis v. Chicago.
10. This photograph of the bridge was taken from high ground on the Iowa side of the river. It shows the long pier that supported the draw span, with the woods of Rock Island beyond and Rock Island City in the distance.
11. There is no known photograph of the steamboat Effie Afton. This photograph of the steamboat Morning Star on the Mississippi near Rock Island bears a good resemblance to the earlier boat.
12. Norman B. Judd was a prominent railroad attorney and corporate officer in Chicago before and after he invited Lincoln to join him in the defense of the Rock Island Bridge. Originally a political adversary of Lincoln, Judd became an important political ally after the Effie Afton trial.
13. Associate Justice John McLean of the U.S. Supreme Court presided over the Effie Afton trial as part of his circuit-riding duties. Although Lincoln supported McLean for the Republican presidential nomination in 1856, he had mixed feelings about the jurist, once saying: “Judge McLean is a man of considerable vigor of mind but no perception at all; if you was [sic] to point your finger at him and also a darning needle he would not Know which was the sharpest.”
14. The Effie Afton trial took place on the top floor of Chicago’s historic Saloon Building in September 1857. The oddly named structure (“saloon” was then synonymous with the French word “salon”) served many functions over the years, including that of the Chicago city hall, U.S. post office, and early home of the federal courts in Chicago.
15. Subject of the infamous Supreme Court decision bearing his name, Dred Scott’s trail intersected Lincoln’s in ironic ways. He came to live at Rock Island, Illinois, as a slave (or servant) to an army surgeon the year after Lincoln served there as a volunteer in the Black Hawk War. His later claim to freedom was based in large part on his residence on the slave-free ground at Rock Island. The Supreme Court decision denying Scott’s claim was announced only six months before Lincoln’s participation in the Effie Afton trial in 1857. Lincoln’s eloquent opposition to the Dred Scott decision, along with his high-profile participation in the Effie Afton trial, elevated his political reputation beyond the limits of Illinois and helped to pave his path to the presidency only four years later.
16. The Rock Island Bridge was modified in the 1860s by replacing the original, flat-topped Howe trusses with new trusses with curved or arched tops. Installed on the original piers with minimal interruptions to river and rail traffic, the new trusses accommodated the heavier locomotives and railroad cars that were then passing over the bridge.
17. In March 1868 a massive ice floe damaged the piers and the timber spans of the Rock Island Bridge so badly that trains could not pass over, and just a week later the bridge was hit by a wind that local newspapers called a tornado. Though the bridge was badly damaged, construction crews brought from Chicago were able to reopen it to railroad traffic only six weeks later.
18. In 1872 the original Rock Island Bridge was replaced with an iron span located a short distance downriver. A two-level bridge with rails on the first level and a roadway for pedestrians, horses, wagons, and carriages on the second, it crossed the Mississippi between Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, as its predecessor had. Jointly financed by the U.S. government and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway Company, the new span was called the Government Bridge.
19. The 1872 Government Bridge was replaced in 1896 with a heavier and stronger steel structure that rested on the original 1872 piers. With twin tracks and two decks, the Government Bridge still stands today, spanning the river from Rock Island, Illinois, to Davenport, Iowa.
20. The Rock Island Bridge was built to permit trains of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad to cross the Mississippi. Known as the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company after August 1866, the railroad continued to use the original bridge and its successors at Rock Island until 1980, when it went out of business. This canceled stock certificate shows a typical Rock Island locomotive and tender of 1915.
21. The scene of the disaster: the intersection of the river, the railroads, and the bridge.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing this book has been a labor of both effort and joy. Research for the story took me to many archives and libraries, and to the geographic location where much of the extraordinary story of the Effie Afton case was played out: the grand intersection of water and land that lies between Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, in the region now known as the Quad Cities. The Legal Papers of Abraham Lincoln were an indispensable source of much of the historical data on which the story rests, but previous works of scholarship relating to the Mississippi River, the development of steamboats in the nineteenth century, and the advance and eventual domination of the river by the railroads and the bridges that carried them across the river were also invaluable.
My familiarity with the legal history of the period, and my own experiences as a courtroom lawyer, helped me understand the grand drama that Abraham Lincoln took part in in the U.S. Circuit Court in Chicago in 1857. And my travels brought me in contact with people who acquainted me with bits of the story along the way. I cannot remember them all, but I can thank them all, and must content myself with naming just a few of those who deserve special appreciation: Daniel W. Stowell, director and editor of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois; James M. Cornelius, curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield; Jan Perone, newspaper librarian at the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, and Jennifer Erickson, in the Audio-Visual collection of the same great institution; Diane Mallstrom of the Genealogy and Local History Department at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County in Cincinnati; Debbie Bainter of the circuit clerk’s office in the McDonough County Courthouse, Macomb, Illinois; Orin R. Rockhold, Bobbi Jackson, and Kathleen Seusy of the Rock Island County Historical Society in Moline, Illinois; Jodie Creen Wesemann, museum specialist–registrar at the Rock Island Arsenal Museum in Rock Island, Illinois; Bryon Andreasen, former editor of the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Assoc
iation; Jason Emerson, historian, Lincoln scholar, and author of (among other books) Lincoln the Inventor and Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln; James F. Shearouse, reference librarian at the Rock Island Public Library; Robert L. Romic of the Technical Library of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Rock Island; Lori B. Bessler, reference librarian at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison; Eunice Schlichting, Christina Kastell, and Christine Chandler of the Putnam Museum of Science and Natural History in Davenport; Jennifer Stibitz of the University of Wisconsin Library in Madison; Peter A. Hansen, editor of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society’s Railroad History; Cara Randall, librarian at the California State Railroad Museum Library in Sacramento; Rodney A. Ross of the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.; Lori Cox-Paul, director of archival operations, and Jake Ersland, archivist, at the National Archives in Kansas City; Mike Widener, rare book librarian at the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale Law School; Barbara DeWolfe and Janet Bloom of the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; Patti Hinson of the Mariners’ Museum Library in Newport News, Virginia; Lauren Leeman, reference specialist at the State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia; Joleene Fluegel, historical consultant at the Geneseo Public Library in Geneseo, Illinois; and William Riebe of Davenport, Iowa, retired land surveyor for the U.S Army Corps of Engineers at Rock Island and indefatigable railroad buff, whose studies of the structure of the bridges at Rock Island were based on original plans and drawings derived from the archives of the Rock Island Arsenal.
I have benefited greatly from the insights and suggestions of Matthew Carnicelli, my agent; Bob Weil, the publishing director of Live-right; and Phil Marino, whose fine editing has done much to make this a good book.
Thanks to them all.
TIMELINE
1809 FEBRUARY 12. Lincoln is born near Hodgenville, Kentucky.
1811–12 Steamboat New Orleans becomes the first steamboat west of the Appalachians, traveling all the way from Pittsburgh to New Orleans.
1814–15 Steamboat Enterprise becomes the first steamboat to engage in regular commerce on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
1816 MAY. U.S. Army begins construction of Fort Armstrong on Rock Island in the Mississippi River. Construction is completed the following year.
DECEMBER. Traveling by flatboat, the Lincoln family moves from Kentucky to southern Indiana.
1816–17 Steamboat Washington becomes the first steamboat to make a round trip from Louisville to New Orleans and back.
1818 Six steamboats are built at Cincinnati, which is emerging as the chief boat-building port on the western rivers.
1826 Construction begins on the Louisville and Portland Canal, designed to bypass the Falls of the Ohio and allow cargo and passengers to travel all the way from Pittsburgh to New Orleans without changing boats or waiting for high water. Construction is completed in 1830.
1828 SPRING. Lincoln travels by flatboat from Rockport, Indiana, to New Orleans. He and his traveling mate sell the flatboat and its cargo in New Orleans and return to Indiana by steamboat.
1830 MARCH. Lincoln moves from Indiana to Illinois, traveling with his father and family.
1831 MARCH. At the age of twenty-one, Lincoln leaves his family and travels down the Sangamon River to New Salem, Illinois.
APRIL–JULY. With two other men, Lincoln makes a second flatboat trip to New Orleans and back.
1832 EARLY. Lincoln works with a crew of laborers clearing the way for the first steamboat passage on the Sangamon River.
APRIL–JULY. Lincoln is mustered into military service at Fort Armstrong on Rock Island. He has joined other volunteers to serve in a conflict with the Sauk and Fox Indians that becomes known as the Black Hawk War. At Fort Armstrong, he is elected captain of his company.
AUGUST 6. Lincoln is defeated in his first bid for election to the Illinois state legislature.
1833 DECEMBER 31. The slave later known as Dred Scott arrives at Fort Armstrong with his owner, a U.S. Army surgeon.
1834 AUGUST 4. Lincoln wins his second bid for election to the Illinois state legislature, where he is active in support of transportation projects.
1836 MAY. Fort Armstrong is decommissioned. Dred Scott’s owner takes him to Fort Snelling, Wisconsin Territory (later Minnesota).
JUNE. Construction begins on the Illinois and Michigan Canal, a water link between the Illinois and Chicago Rivers that will accommodate boat traffic from the Mississippi to Chicago.
SEPTEMBER 9. The Illinois Supreme Court admits Lincoln to the practice of law.
1837 MARCH 1. Lincoln’s name is entered on the roll of attorneys by the Illinois Supreme Court clerk. He moves to Springfield and forms a partnership with John Todd Stuart, a prominent lawyer he met at Fort Armstrong.
1838 Lincoln handles most of the law partnership’s business while Stuart campaigns for Congress against Lincoln’s future political nemesis, Stephen A. Douglas.
AUGUST 6. Stuart is elected to Congress, and Lincoln is reelected to the Illinois state legislature.
1841 APRIL. Lincoln becomes the junior partner of Stephen T. Logan, another prominent Springfield lawyer.
1842 MAY 13. The Northern Cross is the first railroad to reach Springfield, Illinois. Poorly built and equipped, it is soon abandoned. In 1853, it is reborn as the Great Western Railroad.
NOVEMBER 4. Lincoln marries Mary Todd of Kentucky.
1844 DECEMBER. Upon the amicable dissolution of his partnership with Logan, Lincoln accepts William (Billy) Herndon as his junior partner.
1846 AUGUST 3. Lincoln is elected to Congress, to take office in December 1847.
1847 JULY. Lincoln makes his first visit to Chicago as a delegate to the River and Harbor Convention, where he meets Norman Judd and other prominent lawyers and politicians.
OCTOBER 25. Lincoln and his family leave Springfield on a nearly six-week-long journey to Washington, D.C., where he is to serve in Congress. They travel by stagecoach to Alton, Illinois, cross the Mississippi to St. Louis, then take a riverboat down the Mississippi to the Ohio and up that river to its junction with the Kentucky River, which in turn brings them to Frankfort, Kentucky. They take the Lexington and Ohio Railroad for a short trip to Lexington, where they visit Mrs. Lincoln’s family. Their journey east from Lexington may include travel by steamboat as well as in stagecoaches and trains.
DECEMBER 2. Lincoln and his family arrive in Washington.
DECEMBER 6. Lincoln takes his seat in Congress.
1848 FEBRUARY 27. The Illinois legislature charters the Rock Island and La Salle Railroad Company and authorizes it to construct a railroad from Rock Island to the Illinois River terminus of the Illinois and Michigan Canal.
LATE SEPTEMBER–EARLY OCTOBER. Lincoln and his family travel by steamboat through the Great Lakes from Buffalo to Chicago. Seeing another steamboat that has run aground in the Detroit River, Lincoln develops an idea for “an Improved Method of Lifting Vessels over Shoals.”
DECEMBER 7. Lincoln returns to Washington for the second session of his congressional term.
1849 MARCH 7. While attending Congress, Lincoln argues the case of Lewis v. Lewis before Chief Justice Roger Taney and the associate justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.
MARCH 10. Still in Washington, Lincoln applies for a patent for his invention of “an Improved Method of Lifting Vessels over Shoals.”
MAY 22. Lincoln’s patent application is approved as Patent No. 6,469.
1851 FEBRUARY 7. The Chicago and Rock Island Railroad is incorporated in Illinois by an amendment to the charter of the Rock Island and La Salle Railroad Company.
FEBRUARY 10. The Illinois legislature incorporates the Illinois Central Railroad Company.
DECEMBER. Lincoln represents an insurance company in the trial of Columbia Insurance Co. v. Peoria Bridge Company, seeking damages sustained when a canal boat and its cargo were lost by crashing into a bridge over the Illinois River. When the jury fails to a
gree on a verdict, the parties reach an out-of-court settlement.
1852 FEBRUARY. In the landmark case of Pennsylvania v. Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Co., the U.S. Supreme Court decides that the suspension bridge over the Ohio River at Wheeling, Virginia (later West Virginia), interferes with steamboat navigation and must be raised to a greater height or torn down. Justice John McLean of Ohio, who will preside over the Effie Afton trial in 1857, writes the opinion.
AUGUST 31. Congress overrules the Supreme Court, declaring the Wheeling Bridge a lawful structure and requiring captains and crews of steamboats on the Ohio River to regulate their vessels so as not to interfere with its elevation or construction.
1853 JANUARY 17. The Illinois legislature charters the Railroad Bridge Company to build a railroad bridge over the Mississippi from Rock Island, Illinois, to Davenport, Iowa, “in such a manner as shall not materially obstruct or interfere with the free navigation of said river.”
FEBRUARY 5. The Iowa legislature charters the Mississippi and Missouri Rail Road Company to build a railroad spanning the state from Davenport on the Mississippi to Council Bluffs on the Missouri River.
JULY. Construction starts on an approach to the Rock Island Bridge.
SEPTEMBER. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis refuses requests for a right-of-way across land formerly held by the military at Rock Island.
1854 FEBRUARY 22. On George Washington’s birthday, the first trains of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad arrive in Rock Island City.
Lincoln's Greatest Case: The River, the Bridge, and the Making of America Page 23