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

Download or read book Lincoln's Greatest Case: The River, the Bridge, and the Making of America written by Brian McGinty and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-02-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of how one sensational trial propelled a self-taught lawyer and a future president into the national spotlight. In May of 1856, the steamboat Effie Afton barreled into a pillar of the Rock Island Bridge, unalterably changing the course of American transportation history. Within a year, long-simmering tensions between powerful steamboat interests and burgeoning railroads exploded, and the nation’s attention, absorbed by the Dred Scott case, was riveted by a new civil trial. Dramatically reenacting the Effie Afton case—from its unlikely inception, complete with a young Abraham Lincoln’s soaring oratory, to the controversial finale—this “masterful” (Christian Science Monitor) account gives us the previously untold story of how one sensational trial propelled a self-taught lawyer and a future president into the national spotlight.