Skip to main content

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

About the Book

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

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.

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

  • Publication Date: February 1, 2016
  • Genres: History, Nonfiction
  • Paperback: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Liveright
  • ISBN-10: 1631491474
  • ISBN-13: 9781631491474