FEBRUARY 28. Lincoln argues the important tax case of Illinois Central v. County of McLean in the Illinois Supreme Court. Unable to reach a decision, the court orders a rehearing.
MAY 30. President Franklin Pierce signs the Kansas-Nebraska Act, opening western territories to slavery under the doctrine of “popular sovereignty” and arousing political opposition from Lincoln and others.
JUNE 5. As the work of locating the piers and constructing the bridge begins, dignitaries gather at Rock Island and six steamboats take twelve hundred distinguished citizens and celebrants up the Mississippi from Rock Island to St. Paul, Minnesota, and back. John A. Dix, president of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, tells the crowd “we are on the way to the Pacific; and we intend to go there.”
JULY. The U.S. marshal and two high army officers arrive at Rock Island with orders to stop the laying of track.
AUGUST. An Iowa congressman charges that Jefferson Davis is opposed to bridging the Mississippi at Rock Island because he favors a southern over a northern railroad route to the Pacific.
DECEMBER. At the behest of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis and the U.S. attorney general, the U.S. attorney files suit to stop the construction of the Rock Island Bridge. The case is referred to Supreme Court Justice John McLean for trial in Washington, D.C.
1855 FEBRUARY. Lincoln is nearly elected to the United States Senate by the Illinois legislature. He ascribes his loss in large part to the opposition of Democratic state senator Norman Judd.
JULY. In United States v. Railroad Bridge Company, Justice McLean refuses to issue an injunction to stop the construction of the Rock Island Bridge, saying that a lawsuit for damages may be filed if a boat is injured by the span. Work on the bridge accelerates.
SEPTEMBER. Lincoln goes to Cincinnati to take part in the important patent trial of McCormick v. Manny, but he is rebuffed by lead attorney Edwin Stanton, his future secretary of war.
NOVEMBER. Construction of the 430-ton steamboat Effie Afton is completed in Cincinnati.
WINTER. Scaffolds are erected on solid ice that extends across the Mississippi as the superstructure of the Rock Island Bridge is put in place.
1856 JANUARY. Lincoln reargues the tax case of Illinois Central v. County of McLean in the Illinois Supreme Court. He will eventually receive a fee of $5,000 for his work in this case in behalf of the Illinois Central Railroad.
APRIL 21–22. The first locomotives pass over the Rock Island Bridge.
MAY 5. The Effie Afton arrives at Rock Island from St. Louis, intending to proceed through the bridge and on to St. Paul. High winds persuade its captain and crew to pause until the following morning.
MAY 6. The Effie Afton approaches the bridge at a high rate of speed, crashes into it, erupts in flames, and sinks. When a section of the bridge catches fire and falls into the river, steamboats nearby blow whistles and ring bells in celebration.
JUNE 19. The newly organized Republican Party opens its first national convention in Philadelphia. John C. Frémont is nominated for president. Lincoln receives 110 votes for the vice presidential nomination but loses to William L. Dayton of New Jersey.
SEPTEMBER 8. Damage to the Rock Island Bridge has been repaired, and trains again cross the span.
SEPTEMBER 27. Construction of the Illinois Central Railroad is completed.
OCTOBER. Jacob Hurd, principal owner of the Effie Afton, files a suit for damages against the Rock Island Bridge in the U.S. Circuit Court in Springfield. Formally titled Hurd et al v. The Railroad Bridge Company, the suit is popularly called the Effie Afton case.
NOVEMBER 19–29. Lincoln successfully represents the defendants in a sensational murder trial in Springfield.
DECEMBER 16. Steamboat owners and businessmen meet in the Merchants’ Exchange in St. Louis and appoint a committee “to take measures to remove the railroad bridge from the Mississippi river” at Rock Island.
1857 SPRING. The Effie Afton case is moved from Springfield to Chicago, as attorneys gather more than a thousand pages of depositions from important witnesses in Illinois, Missouri, and other states.
MARCH 6. In Washington, Chief Justice Roger Taney announces the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, summarily denying Dred Scott’s claim to be a free man. The decision outrages Lincoln and gives rise to one of his most powerful political arguments.
JULY 7. Lincoln is in Chicago, where he agrees to join Norman Judd and two other attorneys in the defense of the Effie Afton trial.
JULY 9. Lincoln appears in the U.S. Circuit Court and successfully argues for a new date for the Effie Afton trial.
FIRST WEEK OF SEPTEMBER. Lincoln arrives in Chicago. With a party of lawyers and engineers he travels to Rock Island on a special railroad car from Chicago to study the bridge in preparation for the upcoming trial.
SEPTEMBER 8. The Effie Afton trial opens in Chicago before Justice John McLean and a jury of twelve men.
SEPTEMBER 9–19. Witnesses testify and depositions are read.
SEPTEMBER 22–23. Lincoln delivers a long closing argument.
SEPTEMBER 25. The jury announces that it is unable to reach a verdict. Three jurors favor the plaintiffs’ claim for damages, while nine believe that the bridge is not a “material obstruction” to steamboat traffic. Justice McLean provides the opportunity of a new trial.
DECEMBER 28. Jacob Hurd writes Senator Stephen Douglas, asking him to become his attorney in a new trial, but Douglas is occupied by government business in Washington.
1858 JANUARY 4. The Committee of Commerce of the House of Representatives is instructed to begin an investigation into the Rock Island Bridge to determine if it is a serious obstruction to the navigation of the Mississippi and, if so, what action the government should take “to cause such obstruction to be removed.”
APRIL 15. The Commerce Committee report says that the bridge is a “material and dangerous obstruction,” but the committee is “disinclined to recommend any action by Congress” because the courts have “full and ample power to remedy any evil that may exist.”
MAY 7. James Ward, a prominent St. Louis steamboat owner, files suit in the U.S. District Court for Iowa asking that the bridge be declared a nuisance and that the court order its removal.
JUNE 16. Meeting in the State Capitol in Springfield, the Republican state convention endorses Lincoln for election to the United States Senate. Accepting the nomination, Lincoln gives his famous “House Divided Speech.”
JULY 24. Norman Judd, who has joined Lincoln in the Republican Party, personally delivers a letter from Lincoln to Senator Douglas proposing a series of debates for the senatorial campaign. Douglas agrees.
AUGUST 21. Lincoln and Douglas meet in Ottawa, Illinois, for their first debate.
OCTOBER 15. Lincoln and Douglas meet for the last of their seven debates in Alton, Illinois.
1859 FEBRUARY 14. Jacob Hurd begins a new suit for damages against the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad. Begun in Rock Island but ultimately moved to McDonough County, Illinois, the suit is never brought to trial and is finally dismissed in 1875.
JUNE. Some malicious persons attempt to set fire to the Rock Island Bridge.
AUGUST. Lincoln travels to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he addresses a large audience on the principles of the Republican Party and surveys the site for the beginning of a railroad to the Pacific.
1860 FEBRUARY 27. Lincoln speaks at Cooper Union in New York.
APRIL 3. In the suit filed by James Ward in Iowa, U.S. District Judge John M. Love declares the Rock Island Bridge a public nuisance and orders that the three piers and superstructure on the Iowa side of the river be torn down. His order is appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will issue its decision in 1863.
MAY 18. Lincoln is nominated for president by the Republican National Convention in Chicago.
AUGUST 7–9. Josiah W. Bissell and Walter F. Chadwick are arrested and indicted in Chicago for conspiracy to burn the Rock Island Bridge.
NOVEMBER 6. Lin
coln prevails in the popular election for president.
DECEMBER 20. South Carolina is the first of eleven states to adopt ordinances of secession from the Union.
1861 FEBRUARY 11–23. Lincoln travels to Washington by train.
MARCH 4. Lincoln is inaugurated as president.
1862 MAY 20. Lincoln signs the Homestead Act, giving a plot of 160 acres of land to each settler who will occupy and improve it for five years.
JULY 1. Lincoln signs a federal income tax law and an “act to aid in the Construction of a Railroad and Telegraph Line from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean.”
JULY 2. Lincoln signs the Morrill Act, authorizing land grants to agricultural and mechanical colleges in every state.
JULY 11. Lincoln signs an act establishing a federal arsenal at Rock Island.
1863 JANUARY 20. The U.S. Supreme Court reverses the Iowa district court decision in Mississippi and Missouri Railroad Company v. Ward, stating that because the jurisdiction of the Iowa court extends only to the middle of the river, removing the bridge on the Iowa side would solve nothing in the matter of obstruction, and if Love’s decision were upheld, “no lawful bridge could be built across the Mississippi anywhere.”
JANUARY 21. Lincoln issues an order setting the uniform width (gauge) of the proposed Pacific railroad from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean at five feet.
MARCH 3. Counteracting Lincoln, Congress sets the width of the proposed Pacific railroad track at four feet eight and a half inches (“standard gauge”).
NOVEMBER 17. Lincoln establishes the starting point for the Pacific railroad in Omaha, Nebraska.
1864 JUNE 9. In a message acknowledging his nomination for a second term as president, Lincoln states that he and his party “are in favor of the speedy construction of the Railroad to the Pacific coast.”
NOVEMBER 4. Lincoln is reelected.
1865 MARCH 4. Lincoln is inaugurated for his second presidential term.
APRIL 14. Lincoln is assassinated.
1866 FEBRUARY 2. Jacob Hurd dies in a steamboat explosion on the W. R. Carter near Vicksburg.
JUNE 27. Congress authorizes the construction of a new bridge across the Mississippi at Rock Island. It is built on the same piers as the first.
JULY 9. The Mississippi and Missouri Railroad Company is acquired by the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad to form the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company.
1867–72 The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opens a channel in the Rock Island Rapids two hundred feet wide and four and a half feet deep.
DECEMBER 30. The U.S. Supreme Court decides the case of Galena, Dubuque, Dunleith, and Minnesota Packet Co. v. Rock Island Bridge, upholding a decision of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois dismissing an admiralty suit brought against the Rock Island Bridge. Justice Stephen J. Field writes the majority opinion, holding that “though bridges and wharves may aid commerce by facilitating intercourse on land, or the discharge of cargoes, they are not in any sense the subjects of maritime lien.” This decision marks the effective end of the Rock Island Bridge litigation.
1868 MARCH 10. A massive ice floe crashes into the Rock Island Bridge, damaging the piers and span so badly that trains cannot pass over it.
MARCH 16. The bridge is seriously damaged by a wind so fierce that the local newspaper calls it a tornado. Three men on the bridge are injured, and a fourth is killed.
APRIL 23. Reconstruction of the bridge is completed, and trains again pass over it.
JULY 20. Congress authorizes the construction of a new bridge a short distance downriver from the existing span. The government will build the bridge, but the railroad will pay half of the construction cost. The new span will be called the Government Bridge.
1869 MAY 10. Leland Stanford drives a golden spike into the railroad at Promontory Summit, Utah, marking the connection of the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroads and the completion of the long-sought railroad across the continent to the Pacific.
MAY 11. The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad finishes its rail connection to Council Bluffs, thus linking it with the railroad across the continent to the Pacific. However, the official connection is reserved for the Cedar Rapids and Missouri River Railroad.
JULY. Construction of the Government Bridge at Rock Island begins.
1872 NOVEMBER. The Government Bridge opens for traffic.
1874 JULY 4. The Eads Bridge at St. Louis is opened to rail traffic. It is the first bridge over the Mississippi at St. Louis.
1875 SEPTEMBER 28. The Circuit Court of McDonough County, Illinois, dismisses Jacob Hurd’s last suit against the Rock Island Bridge.
1879 More than 85 percent of the surplus produce of the trans-Mississippi states now goes east by rail and only 15 percent by water.
1880 Thirteen railroad bridges now cross the Mississippi between St. Louis and St. Paul.
1895 Congress authorizes construction of a new Government Bridge, to be built of steel on the piers of the existing bridge.
1896 The new Government Bridge opens to rail traffic.
1907 Congress decides that the channel in the Rock Island Rapids must be deepened to six feet.
1980 Nearly 130 years after its founding, the Rock Island Railroad is liquidated in bankruptcy. The Government Bridge at Rock Island continues to be used by automobiles, trucks, busses, and other railroads. Although the original bridge is long gone, modest monuments on both sides of the river mark its former location.
NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES
CP Chicago Press
CT Chicago Tribune
CWL Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler. 9 vols. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55.
DG Davenport Gazette
HI Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln, ed. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis with the assistance of Terry Wilson. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998.
HL Herndon’s Lincoln by William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, ed. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis. Urbana and Chicago: Knox College Lincoln Studies Center and University of Illinois Press, 2006.
PAL:LDC Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases, ed. Daniel W. Stowell and others. 4 vols. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008.
PJD Papers of Jefferson Davis, ed. Lynda Laswell Crist and Mary Seaton Dix. Vol. 5, 1853–55. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.
RIA Rock Island Argus
RHP Robert R. Hitt Papers, Library of Congress
SLMR St. Louis Missouri Republican
Stat United States Statutes at Large
Ward James Ward v. The Mississippi and Missouri Railroad Company, District Court of the United States for the District of Iowa, Middle Division, RG 21, National Archives and Records Administration, Central Plains Region, Kansas City, MO.
INTRODUCTION
1 As chartered by the Illinois legislature on January 17, 1853, the bridge company was named the “Railroad Bridge Company.” Private Laws of the State of Illinois, Passed by the Eighteenth General Assembly, Convened January 3, 1853 (Springfield, IL: Lanphier and Walker, 1853), 329–30. See discussion in chapter 4.
2 Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln, Redeemer President, 171.
3 Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life 1:337.
4 Neely, Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation, 36.
5 Thomas, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography, 157.
6 At the time of this writing, the only book about the case is Larry A. Riney, Hell Gate of the Mississippi: The Effie Afton Trial and Abraham Lincoln’s Role in It (Geneseo, IL: Talesman Press, 2006).
7 PAL:LDC 2:324, 2:331, 2:338–39. Lincoln’s most famous murder trial was that of William “Duff” Armstrong, also known as the Almanac trial (1858). PAL:LDC 4:1–48. This was the subject of the 1939 motion picture starring Henry Fonda titled Young Mr. Lincoln. See Steiner, An Honest Calling, 6, 180n3.
8 PAL:LDC 2:11, 2:43; see Steiner, An Honest Calling, 103–36.
9 A wire suspension bridge for pedestrians, horses, mules, carriages, and swine was opened in January 1855 at the site later occupied by the Hennepin Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis. Torn apart by a high wind in March 1855, it was repaired and stood until 1875. Costello, Climbing the Mississippi River Bridge by Bridge 2:94.
10 U.S. Const., Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 3 (giving Congress the power to regulate “commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states”). See Ely, “Lincoln and the Rock Island Bridge Case.”
11 See U.S. Const., Art. VI, cl. 2: “The Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, . . . shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”
12 “An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States Northwest of the River Ohio, Adopted by the Congress under the Articles of Confederation,” July 13, 1787, sec. 4.
13 See Pennsylvania v. Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company, 54 U.S. [13 Howard] 518 (1852); 59 U.S. [18 Howard] 421 (1855). See also discussion in chapter 4.
14 Martin, Railroads Triumphant, 278; see discussion in Ely, “Lincoln and the Rock Island Bridge Case.”
15 Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. [19 Howard] 393, 407, 446, 450. See discussion in chapter 4.
16 CWL 2:495.
17 See discussion in chapter 13.
18 Stampp, America in 1857, vii.
19 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 188–92. The Panic began on August 24 and expanded dramatically during September, while Lincoln was in Chicago engaged in the Effie Afton trial, forcing the closure of banks across the country and plunging many individuals and businesses into financial insolvency.
20 Stampp, America in 1857, viii.
21 See, e.g., Guy C. Fraker, Lincoln’s Ladder to the Presidency: The Eighth Judicial Circuit (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012); Roger Billings and Frank J. Williams, eds., Abraham Lincoln, Esq.: The Legal Career of America’s Greatest President (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010); Brian Dirck, Lincoln the Lawyer (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007); Mark E. Steiner, An Honest Calling: The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006); Allen D. Spiegel, A. Lincoln, Esquire: A Shrewd, Sophisticated Lawyer in His Time (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002); John P. Frank, Lincoln as a Lawyer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961); John J. Duff, A. Lincoln: Prairie Lawyer (New York: Bramhall House, 1960); Albert A. Woldman, Lawyer Lincoln (Boston: Little, Brown, 1937).
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