In the category of popular history, we have word of a new release from Norton/Liveright:
Lincoln's Greatest Case: The River, the Bridge, and the Making of America (Feb. 2015), by
Brian McGinty. Here's a description from the Press:
In the early hours of May 6, 1856, the steamboat Effie Afton
barreled into a pillar of the Rock Island Bridge—the first railroad
bridge ever to span the Mississippi River. Soon after, the newly
constructed vessel, crowded with passengers and livestock, erupted into
flames and sank in the river below, taking much of the bridge with it.
As lawyer and Lincoln scholar Brian McGinty dramatically reveals in Lincoln's Greatest Case,
no one was killed, but the question of who was at fault cried out for
an answer. Backed by powerful steamboat interests in St. Louis,
the owners of the Effie Afton quickly pressed suit, hoping that
a victory would not only prevent the construction of any future bridges
from crossing the Mississippi but also thwart the burgeoning spread of
railroads from Chicago. The fate of the long-dreamed-of transcontinental
railroad lurked ominously in the background, for if rails could not
cross the Mississippi by bridge, how could they span the continent all
the way to the Pacific?
The official title of the case was Hurd et al. v. The Railroad Bridge Company, but it could have been St. Louis v. Chicago,
for the transportation future of the whole nation was at stake. Indeed,
was it to be dominated by steamboats or by railroads? Conducted at
almost the same time as the notorious Dred Scott case, this new
trial riveted the nation’s attention. Meanwhile, Abraham Lincoln,
already well known as one of the best trial lawyers in Illinois, was
summoned to Chicago to join a handful of crack legal practitioners in
the defense of the bridge. While there, he succesfully helped unite the
disparate regions of the country with a truly transcontinental rail
system and, in the process, added to the stellar reputation that vaulted
him into the White House less than four years later.
Re-creating the Effie Afton
case from its unlikely inception to its controversial finale, McGinty
brilliantly animates this legal cauldron of the late 1850s, which turned
out to be the most consequential trial in Lincoln's nearly quarter
century as a lawyer. Along the way, the tall prairie lawyer's consummate
legal skills and instincts are also brought to vivid life, as is the
history of steamboat traffic on the Mississippi, the progress of
railroads west of the Appalachians, and the epochal clashes of railroads
and steamboats at the river’s edge.
Lincoln's Greatest Case is legal history on a grand scale and an essential first act to a pivotal Lincoln drama we did not know was there.
