Before the state wholly abandoned its efforts, however, it embarked on the construction of one of the railroads called for in the Internal Improvements Act. Dubbed the Northern Cross, the road was originally intended to cross the state from the Mississippi River in the west to the Indiana border in the east, but in its straitened circumstances the state could only afford to lay sixty miles of track extending from the Illinois River to Springfield on the Sangamon.9 As part of the construction work, a small locomotive was brought in to haul construction materials along the line. According to John W. Starr, who studied Lincoln and the railroads closely, it was the first locomotive ever put into operation anywhere in the Mississippi Valley.10 The people of Springfield celebrated when the Northern Cross arrived in their midst on May 13, 1842, but their celebration soon crumbled into disappointment. The road itself was poorly built, and its equipment was inadequate to carry all of the products Springfield and its environs wanted to send to New Orleans. What’s more, economic conditions had so glutted New Orleans with the products of the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys (mostly wheat, corn, vegetables, and fruits) that the market for products from Illinois was nearly nonexistent. The Northern Cross soon ceased operations, and in April 1847, the state sold the road and its equipment at auction.11 The new owners changed its name to the Sangamon and Morgan Railroad, and in 1853 changed it again to the Great Western Railroad Company.12
Lincoln left Springfield to attend his first (and only) term in Congress in October 1847, traveling with his wife and two sons. It is difficult to trace the family’s route all the way from Springfield to the national capital, although parts of it are known. They went by stagecoach from Springfield to Alton and from there crossed the Mississippi to St. Louis, where they boarded a riverboat for a trip downriver to the Ohio. They then proceeded up that river to its junction with the Kentucky River, which in turn brought them to Frankfort. There they boarded the Lexington and Ohio Railroad for a short trip to Lexington, where they visited Mrs. Lincoln’s family.13 Their journey east from Lexington probably included a return to the Ohio River and a trip upstream to Wheeling, Virginia, or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, although at least part of it would have been made by stagecoach and a part on the partially completed Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to Washington, where they arrived in December 1847.14 Lincoln returned to Illinois after the congressional adjournment in August 1848, traveling through New York and New England by train and by boat through the Great Lakes to Chicago. Returning to Washington in December 1848, he remained until March 1849. His trip back home undoubtedly included some travel on the Baltimore and Ohio, some travel by stagecoach, and a long trip by boat down the Ohio and up the Mississippi to St. Louis, where he arrived on March 26, 1849.15 The journeys both to and from the nation’s capital were difficult in 1847, 1848, and 1849, much slower and more involved than Lincoln’s trip to the national capital would be twelve years later, after he was elected president.16
Before he left on his first visit to Washington, Lincoln had joined his neighbors in central Illinois in urging the construction of a railroad between Springfield and Alton.17 The railroad was to be called the Alton and Sangamon and provide a valuable connection between two of the most important cities in the south-central part of the state. Financing was, as usual, difficult, so work on the project did not begin until 1850, and the first train did not arrive in the capital until September 9, 1852. Hundreds of Springfielders were on hand to cheer the arrival of the cars. “It was a glorious sight,” the editor of a local newspaper wrote, “—the careening of the passenger train over our prairies! The railroads of Illinois will hasten our state to her brilliant destiny!” From Springfield, the railroad continued north to Bloomington, where it arrived in 1853.18
The construction of a central railroad that would connect the northern and southern extremities of Illinois had been discussed for years. As early as 1836, the Illinois legislature chartered a corporation to lay rails from “the mouth of the Ohio river, and thence north to a point on the Illinois River, at or near the termination of the Illinois–Michigan Canal,”19 but the money necessary to build the road could not be raised. When Sidney Breese, a sometime Illinois circuit judge and state Supreme Court justice who had presided over cases that Lincoln argued, was a member of the United States Senate in the mid-1840s, he tried to get the federal government to subsidize the construction of a railroad through central Illinois, but Congress would not act. Things went differently, however, when one of Breese’s Senate colleagues, Lincoln’s later arch political rival Stephen A. Douglas, formed an alliance with Senator William R. King of Alabama and successfully steered a bill through Congress granting not only Illinois but also Mississippi and Alabama large tracts of federal land to finance the building of railroads.20
Congress called for a north-south railroad running through Illinois from the southern terminus of the Illinois and Michigan Canal to Cairo at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, with branches to Chicago and Galena; there was also talk that the Illinois railroad would connect with another north-south line extending all the way to Mobile, Alabama.21 Illinois received nearly 2.6 million acres of federal land to help it finance construction of the Illinois stretch of the railroad.22 The state in turn chartered the Illinois Central Railroad, authorized it to build the Illinois road Congress called for, and gave it the federal land to finance the project.23 Construction began in late 1851 and was completed in September 1856. The road covered the then-astounding distance of 705 miles, ran through thirty counties, and was reported to be the longest single railroad in the world.24
The railroads stimulated business in Illinois, making it easier (and cheaper) for farmers to bring their crops to market and thus encouraged more extensive planting. The railroads also promoted the growth of towns in the interior part of the state; no longer did villages and hamlets have to depend on wagon shipments to riverboats to make their markets.25 The railroads also invigorated legal business in Illinois, for railroads were complicated business entities with extensive commercial and property interests that touched the lives of people everywhere. Lawyers were needed to provide legal guidance for railroad entrepreneurs, to protect the interests of stockholders, and to enforce the rights of those with whom they came into contact.
Lincoln accepted many cases involving the railroads, although he never represented railroad interests to the exclusion of other clients: he was always as willing to file lawsuits against railroads as to defend them from suits filed by other lawyers.26 Lincoln and his law partner, William H. Herndon, sued the railroads in behalf of individuals who had been injured on or about the rails.27 They handled at least twenty-nine cases involving railroad stock subscription payments,28 and Lincoln himself participated in at least six cases involving the corporate charters of railroads.29
One of Lincoln’s most important railroad cases tested the power of counties to tax the property of the Illinois Central Railroad. The state constitution gave all counties “power to assess and collect taxes” and provided that the taxes were to be “uniform in respect to persons and property.”30 But when the state legislature chartered the Illinois Central it exempted the railroad from taxation for six years on condition that it pay the state 5 percent of its gross proceeds every six months during the same six-year period.31 The case was begun in the McLean County circuit court when an attorney employed by the railroad sought an injunction barring the county from collecting any tax against the railroad. The case would ultimately have to be decided in the Illinois Supreme Court, so the attorney asked Lincoln to join him in taking the case up on appeal.
Lincoln first checked with the county to make sure that it was not going to engage him, and then agreed to represent the railroad. In the supreme court, he presented an elaborate argument to uphold the constitutional power of the legislature to exempt a corporation from taxation upon the payment of a portion of its earnings. He cited four cases from the United States Supreme Court and twenty-two from different state courts as authority for his a
rgument. When the Illinois Supreme Court issued its decision (in favor of the railroad) it cited thirteen of those cases in its opinion.32
After the case of Illinois Central Railroad Company v. County of McLean was concluded, Lincoln presented a bill for his services. Years later, Herndon recalled that the amount was originally $2,000 but that the railroad refused to pay. Herndon said that the railroad official in Chicago exclaimed, “Why, sir, this is as much as Daniel Webster himself would have charged. We cannot allow such a claim.”33 Stung by the rebuff, Lincoln increased his bill to $5,000, and in January 1857, filed suit against the railroad for that amount. He submitted to the court a written opinion signed by six highly respected lawyers stating that his services in behalf of the railroad were reasonably worth $5,000, and on June 23, 1857, the court awarded him judgment in that amount. After the sheriff was given a writ to collect the judgment, the railroad relented, paying Lincoln $4,800, the amount of the judgment less Lincoln’s initial retainer of $200.34 Since his agreement with Herndon called for equal division of all of their fees, Lincoln promptly gave his partner one-half of the money he received.35
The following year, in his famous campaign for the United States Senate against Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln answered reports (possibly originating with Douglas) that he had once received a fee of $5,000 from the Illinois Central and that this represented public money to which he was not rightfully entitled. In a public statement, Lincoln admitted that he and Herndon had received the fee but insisted that it was fairly earned. He thought that his services in the McLean County tax case were worth $5,000, for he had saved the railroad half a million dollars, but they only wanted to pay him about $500. “I sued them and got the $5,000,” Lincoln explained. “This is the whole truth about the fee; and what tendency it has to prove that I received any of the people[’]s money, or that I am on very cozy terms with the Railroad Company, I do not comprehend.”36
In addition to his legal work for and against railroads, Lincoln did important work for businessmen who hoped to take advantage of the advent of the railroads. In 1853, he acted as attorney and adviser for a group of promoters who wanted to start a new town in Logan County, northeast of Sangamon, along the projected route of the new railroad from Springfield to Chicago. Lincoln helped the promoters meet the legal requirements for the establishment of the town, used his influence with the legislature in Springfield to help the town become the new seat of Logan County, and drafted necessary papers. When the promoters told him that they wanted to name the town for him, Lincoln professed modesty—he was later quoted as saying, “I know of nothing named Lincoln that ever amounted to very much,” but he was clearly proud of the honor they had bestowed on him. Years later, a story was told that Lincoln was in the new town when lots were first put on sale. He is supposed to have cut a watermelon open with his pocketknife, squeezed the juice into a cup, and poured it on the ground, saying: “I now christen this town site. Its name is ‘Lincoln’ and soon to be named the permanent capitol of Logan County.”37 The story may be apocryphal, but Lincoln’s important role in the establishment of the town is not. Lincoln did in fact become the new Logan County seat, the site of the Logan County Courthouse, and a prosperous stop on the Chicago and Alton Railroad between Springfield and Chicago. It also acquired a historical distinction that no other town could equal, for it was the first and only town named for America’s most famous president before he assumed his high office.38
While Illinoisans were encouraging the construction of railroads within the state, investors from the East Coast were eyeing the feasibility of lines that would enter the state from outside. In 1851, under the leadership of a New York investor named Thomas C. Durant and a construction engineer from Connecticut named Henry Farnam, the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad started work on a line from Lake Erie across southern Michigan.39 While this railroad already had links with roads extending all the way to New York, they now wanted to establish connections with Chicago. In the meantime, a group of investors had obtained a charter from the Illinois legislature to build a railroad from the Illinois and Michigan Canal westward across the state to Rock Island, on the Mississippi River opposite Davenport, Iowa. Originally the Rock Island and La Salle Railroad Company, the corporate name was changed in early 1851 to the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad Company.
Around this same time, the Illinois legislature authorized the extension of the line all the way to Chicago.40 But the Chicago and Rock Island promoters needed construction money and expertise, while the builders of the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana needed access to Chicago. The solution was to combine forces. Henry Farnam became the contractor in charge of building the Chicago and Rock Island, while his business partner, Joseph E. Sheffield, raised the necessary capital. Eastern investors and engineers joined prominent men in Illinois and Iowa to form the railroad’s government. Norman B. Judd, an influential Chicago lawyer, became the secretary and chief counsel, Farnam joined the board of directors, and John B. Jervis of Rome, New York, became the president. Jervis was one of the best-known civil engineers in the country, with a nearly forty-year-long record of engineering work on important canal, railroad, and aqueduct projects, including the Erie Canal, the Croton Aqueduct (which brought the first dependable supply of fresh water into New York City), and the Hudson River and the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroads.41 With help from Jervis, Farnam coordinated the construction work that brought the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana into Chicago, and the Chicago and Rock Island to the Mississippi.42
Construction of the Chicago and Rock Island line began in late 1851 and was completed in early 1854. On February 22, 1854, George Washington’s birthday, a throng of spectators gathered in Rock Island to watch the first train pull up to the depot, 181 miles from its beginning in Chicago.43 Henry Farnam addressed the crowd, saying: “Today we witness the nuptials of the Atlantic with the Father of Waters. Tomorrow the people of Rock Island can go to New York the entire distance by railroad, and within the space of forty-two hours.”44 Formal opening of the railroad was celebrated on June 5, 1854, when a special train left the Chicago station with celebrity guests aboard, including former U.S. president Millard Fillmore, Chicago mayor Isaac L. Milliken, the famous American historian George Bancroft, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, one of the most popular novelists of the day, and fifty newspaper editors. There was a banquet at Rock Island, after which the celebrities boarded steamboats chartered by the railroad to take them up the Mississippi to St. Paul and adjoining Fort Snelling and back again to Rock Island. Millard Fillmore declared the excursion an enterprise for which “history had no parallel, and such as no prince could possibly undertake.”45 Catharine Maria Sedgwick marveled at the continuous railroad connections between the East Coast and the Mississippi (her home was in Massachusetts) and extolled them as “the last link in the chain that binds, in union and brotherhood, the states from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”46 According to the railroad’s principal historian, the celebrity tour and its attendant publicity made the Chicago and Rock Island “the best-known railroad west of the Alleghenies.”47
Connecting New York with the Mississippi River was an achievement of which the promoters of the Chicago and Rock Island could be proud, but it was not their ultimate goal. They wanted to extend their rails across the Mississippi and had already made plans to do so. On January 17, 1853, the Illinois legislature granted the same promoters a charter for the Railroad Bridge Company and authorized it “to build, maintain and use a railroad bridge over the Mississippi river, or that portion within the jurisdiction of the state of Illinois at or near Rock Island.” The company was authorized to connect the bridge “with any railroad, either in the states of Illinois or Iowa, terminating at or near said point,” provided only that the bridge would not “materially obstruct or interfere with the free navigation of said river.”48 On February 5 of the same year, the Iowa legislature incorporated the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad Company and authorized it to lay r
ails across Iowa from the eastern line of the state at Davenport to the western line at Council Bluffs, and to construct and use all bridges necessary to complete that statewide span.49 Between the Illinois and the Iowa railroads lay an island and a great river that had never been crossed by a railroad bridge—and beyond that a continent of broad plains, towering mountains, long valleys, and sandy deserts leading all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
The dream that a great transcontinental railroad would one day cross the Mississippi and link the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America was neither new nor novel in the early 1850s, but it was becoming more urgent and, in the minds of both businessmen and politicians, increasingly inevitable. Americans both North and South endorsed the idea. The proposed line was generally called the Pacific railroad, in recognition of its ultimate destination, although its supporters were unable to agree where the railroad should be built or how it should be paid for. As early as 1845, a New York–based merchant and promoter named Asa Whitney had proposed a route that would lead from the western shore of Lake Michigan across the Great Plains to South Pass in the Rocky Mountains, where it would divide into two branches, one that would connect with San Francisco Bay and the other with the Columbia River. Whitney had petitioned Congress for a massive land grant that would enable him to build a railroad along this route, but political opposition—and charges that he was only trying to enrich himself—killed the idea.50
In the South, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi also supported the construction of a Pacific railroad, although his favored route lay along the 32nd parallel of north latitude.51 Davis believed that the best route would commence at some point on the southern Mississippi, most likely Memphis or New Orleans, and that it would proceed through San Antonio and El Paso in Texas, cross southern New Mexico, and finally emerge on the Pacific coast in southern California. He believed that it should be built by the federal government, for it would provide dependable routes for the transport of the U.S. Army troops that were then defending large sections of the territory recently acquired from Mexico against Indian attacks.52 After he became secretary of war in early 1853, Davis sent reconnaissance parties west to survey four separate routes. One crossed the northern Great Plains from St. Paul to Puget Sound; a second began at St. Louis and ended at San Francisco; a third ran across Oklahoma into Los Angeles; a fourth followed Davis’s favorite route across Texas to San Diego.
Lincoln's Greatest Case: The River, the Bridge, and the Making of America Page 4
