LINCOLN'S GREATEST CASE

Solid account of the most significant case in Abraham Lincoln’s 25-year law career.

On May 6, 1856, the steamboat Effie Afton crashed into the Rock Island Bridge—the first railroad bridge across the Mississippi River—damaging the span and destroying the vessel and its 350 tons of livestock, machinery and other cargo. The 200 passengers on board were unharmed. The boat operators’ ensuing suit for damages sparked an “epochal clash” between the railroads—a new, faster, more economical means of transport—and the steamboats then commanding the nation’s western waterways. With a focus on the lanky Lincoln, a lawyer for the defense who would become president four years later, historian and attorney McGinty (The Body of John Merryman: Abraham Lincoln and the Suspension of Habeas Corpus, 2011, etc.) recounts the historic 15-day Chicago trial, which involved more than 100 witnesses and ended in a hung jury, paving the way for the dominance of the railroad industry. Despite Lincoln’s low self-assessment (“I am not an accomplished lawyer,” he said), he proved a persuasive orator, sometimes whittling a piece of wood as he contested testimony and impressing jurors with his detailed knowledge of river currents and other facts in the case. Lincoln may have been awkward and ungainly, writes the author, but his courtroom skills convinced powerful backers that he had a political future. His debates two years later with Illinois Sen. Stephen A. Douglas would prove his springboard to the presidency. Besides detailing the Effie Afton case’s importance to Lincoln’s career, McGinty offers an excellent view of Mississippi steamboat traffic in the mid-19th century and the coming onrush of the railroads, which would transform how the nation moved passengers and goods.

An important footnote in the making of the 16th president.