The new boat was named Effie Afton, in honor of the author of a book of stories and poems that was published in Boston the previous year.29 The author’s given name was Sarah Elizabeth Harper, and she was born in New Hampshire in 1829, the daughter of a country physician who also had a career in politics (Joseph M. Harper was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1831 to 1835 and briefly served as acting governor of New Hampshire in 1831).30 Some time before the Civil War, she traveled to Texas, where she met and married a man named Jacques Eugene Monmouth. While still a young woman, she showed a talent for writing fiction and poetry, contributing to magazines such as Waverly and the Boston Cultivator under folksy pseudonyms such as Lil Lindon and Effie Afton. Effie Afton was the name she used for her most popular work, Eventide, in 1854.31
The Effie Afton was licensed on November 22, 1855, by the surveyor of customs in Cincinnati and enrolled the same day as a vessel “to carry on the coasting trade.”32 It then left Cincinnati for the nearby town of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, where it took on two thousand barrels of flour.33 It returned to Cincinnati eight days later and loaded another large cargo destined for Wheeling. Proceeding from Wheeling to Pittsburgh, it carried 425 tons of freight and traveled at an average speed of ten miles per hour, all the while drawing only four feet of water, a remarkably shallow draft for such a heavy load. Returning downriver, the boat covered the 115 miles that separated Portsmouth, Ohio, from Cincinnati, in seven and a half hours, stopping twice along the route. As Elwin Page, a close historian of the Effie Afton, has written, “she was indeed a smart boat.”34
Like St. Louis, Cincinnati had a busy waterfront in Effie Afton’s time. A local newspaper noted the arrival of no fewer than ten steamboats on a single day in November 1855. But there was ominous news along the banks. Four boats had recently fallen victim to accidents along the river, and wrecking operations were under way for five boats that had been sunk or burned. Steamboating was a great business, but it was also dangerous.35
With its crew very much aware of these recent accidents, Effie Afton’s next trip was all the way down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. On the way, the boat reached Louisville in seven days, carrying forty-six cabin passengers, thirty-seven deck passengers, and 110 tons of freight. Page says that it was “hailed as the fastest side-wheeler of her draft on the Ohio and the Mississippi. Besides that,” he added, “she was already proving profitable.”36
Hurd and his partners now began to prepare for a trip from Cincinnati to St. Paul, Minnesota Territory. It would be an important trip for both the Afton and its captain, for neither had been on the Upper Mississippi before, neither had visited St. Louis, and neither had ventured as far north as Rock Island.37 The boat left Cincinnati on April 28, 1856, accompanied by two other steamboats, the Great West and the J. B. Carson.38 It performed admirably on the trip from Cincinnati to St. Louis, but when it arrived at the Missouri city there was a mechanical problem. One of the passengers later reported that the Afton had to put in for two or three hours of repairs in St. Louis. He said that there was “something the matter with the escape pipe.”39 Joseph McCammant had no piloting experience on the Mississippi above St. Louis, so it was necessary to take on a new pilot for the passage north of that city. Nathaniel W. Parker, a St. Louis–based pilot with more than twenty years’ experience on the Upper Mississippi, was the man chosen for the job. Samuel McBride was hired as his assistant. Parker alone was promised a thousand dollars for taking the Afton up to St. Paul and back to St. Louis, a single run that was expected to take two weeks.40 Parker, McBride, and McCammant were all aboard as the boat headed north from St. Louis.
The Effie Afton arrived at Rock Island on the morning of May 5, 1856. Aboard were livestock, machinery, farm implements, and groceries weighing in the aggregate more than 350 tons. Two hundred people were also on board: seventy-five cabin passengers, seventy-five deck passengers, and fifty crew members.41 The Rock Island Bridge had been open just over two weeks. Hurd found a good number of boats that were tied up at the Rock Island docks about half a mile below the bridge; looking through the span, he could see other boats tied up above the crossing. The J. B. Carson was one of the other boats on the Rock Island side. The cause of the delay was a high wind that was whipping across the river. That, combined with high water and swift currents, persuaded the pilots that it would be wise to wait until the wind died down. Hurd later said that he thought there were as many as nine or ten boats waiting at Rock Island during the day, and as many as three or four may have arrived during the night.42
The following morning was quiet, for the wind had died down. As dawn broke over the river, three of the steamboats waiting at the Rock Island docks fired up their engines, moved out into the river, and passed through the open draw of the Rock Island Bridge, apparently without incident.43 At about 6:30 a.m., the J. B. Carson also moved out, followed almost immediately by the Effie Afton. To leave the dock, it was necessary for the Afton first to back up and then turn toward the draw. A steam ferry called the John Wilson was then crossing the river. As the Afton backed up, it collided with the Wilson, damaging the Afton’s guard and breaking seven of its guard chains (iron rods that helped to support the guards and paddle wheels and prevent them from sagging).44 The Afton was apparently unconcerned about any damage it had inflicted on the Wilson, for it did not stop or slow down but continued on its way.
The Afton was a faster boat than the J. B. Carson, even loaded with passengers and cargo. Though the Carson had started ahead of the Afton, the Afton decided to make a race for the bridge draw. Speed was one of the distinguishing features of the Afton; in fact, it was an attribute that was highly valued on all of the steamboats, for faster boats could deliver their cargoes and passengers more quickly than other craft and thus get a leg up on future business. Captain Hurd and his pilots (McBride and Parker were both on duty that morning) must have known that the assembled river boats, and many persons ashore, were watching them as they moved out and thought that they could make an impression.45 The distance between the Rock Island docks and the bridge was less than a mile, but the Afton quickly gained on the Carson, passing it on the left (Iowa) side of the channel. Its speed was so great that it had no trouble leaving the Carson in its wake.
The Afton’s object was the Illinois side of the long pier. To enter the draw, it had to come around the Carson on the Iowa side, then steer for the opening on the Illinois side. All seemed to be going well until it was about halfway through the draw, when it began to sway from side to side. It struck one of the piers with an impact that was felt all over the boat (which pier was struck first would be a matter of dispute in the trial). In the pilot house, bells were rung, signaling to the engineers that power to the larboard (left) wheel was to be shut off. The wheel stopped, then started again, then stopped a second time. With the sound of hissing steam blaring in the morning air and bells ringing frantically, the boat then swung to the right, where it collided with the short pier. It seemed to stop there for a time, then swung farther to the right. As it did this, the upper decks and chimneys collided with the superstructure of the fixed span that adjoined the draw on the Illinois side. This shattered the upper cabins, broke the chimneys loose from their supports, and overturned stoves on the decks (it was a cold morning and the stoves were all red hot).46
Fires erupted. As the boat careened to its larboard side, water began to flow over its guards. The crew worked to extinguish the fires while frantic passengers began to climb off the boat and onto the bridge. The J. B. Carson came up close to rescue some of the passengers, and for a time the two hulls were lashed together. At first it seemed that all the fires on the Afton had been put out. Then a bigger and more aggressive fire flared up. The flames grew so intense that the Carson cut its lines to the Afton and began to back out of the draw. The timbers of the bridge itself were now on fire.
When and how the fires started, and how long they continued to burn, were issues that were to be settled later. But burn they did—for
minutes or perhaps an hour or longer. The result was the complete destruction of the Effie Afton and its cargo and the similar destruction of the first fixed bridge span on the Illinois side of the draw. The timbers there burned ferociously and ultimately tumbled into the river on top of the wreckage of the Afton.
All of the passengers were able to escape without loss of life. It was not so with the horses and cattle aboard. Some managed to jump over the rails and swim to shore; others, not so fortunate, were burned or drowned in the river. The river current quickly grasped the remains of both the boat and the fallen bridge span and carried them downstream, where they lodged on a sandbar not far from the Rock Island waterfront.
Excited crowds flocked to the shores on both sides of the river as the disaster unfolded. Passengers and crews of boats that were waiting to make their passage through the bridge surveyed the scene in dismay. Some were able to climb up on the bridge, keeping their distance from the flames, and look down on the boats below them. The overwhelming reaction was, of course, horror. It was a disaster, a great loss of property, and a setback both for river and railroad transportation at Rock Island.
But not all who watched the events of May 6, 1856, were unhappy. The Rock Island Argus reported exultation among some of the witnesses to the collision and fire, writing that when the span of the bridge fell “the steamboats lying at both cities, and those on the river, all sounded their loudest whistle.” Some supposed that the whistle signaled “joy that the obstruction to navigation had been partially removed,” while others thought it was “to warn those on the river to look out for the floating wreck.” The Argus reported a rumor that the accident was “intentional and done for the purpose of burning the bridge,” but it did not think the rumor was “entitled to the slightest credit.”47 A few days after the collision, the Argus reported that the steamboat Hamburg had been seen going upriver flying a flag with the inscription: “Mississippi Bridge Destroyed, Let All Rejoice.” “However much the river men’s interest may clash with those of the railroad,” the Argus commented, “this seems to be going it a ‘leetle to [sic] strong.’”48
Six days after the Effie Afton struck the Rock Island Bridge, the St. Louis Intelligencer revealed the Missouri city’s keen interest in the events at Rock Island. In an article cast in the form of an affidavit signed by “citizens of the Mississippi valley, and passengers on board the steamer James Lyon,” the St. Louis paper condemned the bridge as an obstruction to navigation and urged “all interested in the free navigation of the Upper Mississippi river, to give public expression to their grievances.” Those who signed the affidavit called on the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce and the river city’s insurance underwriters to take steps to prevent future encroachments on the river.49 The Rock Island Argus, which generally supported the steamboat interests against the railroads, agreed, writing that “there can be no doubt that the bridge, constructed in the manner it is, materially obstructs the navigation of the river, but whether the interests affected have any remedy is more than we can tell.”50
Opponents of the Rock Island Bridge had tried in the past to stop its construction, and they had failed. Now they would see if they could force it to be torn down. If they could not do that directly, perhaps they could do it indirectly by demonstrating that lawsuits would be filed whenever a steamboat collided with the bridge. Money speaks a language all its own. The Effie Afton was a valuable steamboat, and its cargo was even more valuable. But all had been lost because of the bridge. Perhaps a lawsuit would force the bridge owners to make good on the damages they had caused and convince them that the Rock Island Bridge should never have been built in the first place.
SIX
The Suit Is Filed
Since his return from his one congressional term in Washington in 1849, Lincoln had gone “to the practice of the law with greater earnestness than ever before” and by 1854, his legal work “had almost superseded the thought of politics in his mind.”1
Almost—but not quite, for it was in 1854 that Stephen Douglas, acting in his capacity as U.S. senator from Illinois and chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, shepherded the Kansas-Nebraska Act through Congress. This remarkable piece of legislation, signed by President Pierce on May 30, 1854, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and opened the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to slavery, but only if settlers in the territories voted for it.2 Douglas called this concession to voters “popular sovereignty” (he borrowed the term from Lewis Cass, the Democrats’ candidate for president in 1848). He knew, of course, that all of the voters would be white men, for neither blacks nor women then held the franchise. Like Lewis Cass and Franklin Pierce, Douglas was a Democrat with presidential ambitions, and he believed that this law would win him political support in the South. Lincoln, however, was a Whig with strong anti-slavery (although not abolitionist) sentiments, and he found the Kansas-Nebraska Act outrageous. In his own words, it “aroused him as he had never been before.”3
The Missouri Compromise had quieted the national argument about slavery for a generation, excluding the peculiar institution from all lands north of 36° 30' north latitude. Kansas-Nebraska abolished the exclusion and, in the process, reignited the national argument over slavery. In Lincoln’s mind, Kansas-Nebraska represented an aggressive thrust by pro-slavery forces into a part of the country they had never been in before. It offended not only his notions of national unity but also his concept of racial justice. “If slavery is not wrong,” he told a newspaper editor, “nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.”4 Kansas-Nebraska’s rekindling of the slavery argument pulled Lincoln back into the political arena with a force he could not resist. He responded to requests for speeches, and he put his name up for election to the Illinois legislature. In a speech he gave in Springfield on October 4, 1854, and repeated in Peoria on October 16, Lincoln articulated his opposition to Douglas’s doctrine of popular sovereignty in words that would be remembered in history. He carefully researched the speech in the state library, much as he would have prepared an argument to be made before the Illinois Supreme Court.5 When delivered, his speech was a cogent review of the history of slavery in the United States, a powerful indictment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and a frontal attack on Douglas’s professed neutrality on the issue of slavery—a neutrality he condemned as moral indifference. “This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate,” he said. “I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty—criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.”6
On election day, November 7, 1854, Lincoln was elected to the legislature along with a majority of anti-Nebraska men, some Whigs and some Democrats. He had begun to think about running for election to the United States Senate against the incumbent James Shields, a pro-Nebraska Democrat whose term was expiring in 1855. While Thomas Hoyne, Franklin Pierce’s U.S. district attorney in Illinois, was preparing his petition for an injunction against the Rock Island Bridge, Lincoln was writing letters seeking support in his bid for election to the Senate. Because a member of the legislature was ineligible for election to the Senate, Lincoln declined to accept his legislative seat and instead concentrated on lining up support for his senatorial bid. He went into the legislative voting on February 8, 1855, with a commanding lead of forty-five votes to forty-one for Shields and five for the anti-Nebraska Democrat, Lyman Trumbull.7 Only fifty votes were required for election. As the balloting continued, however, it became evident that Governor Joel Matteson, a wealthy Democrat whose position on Nebraska was as equivocal as
his personal ethics, was working behind the scenes to siphon votes away from both Lincoln and Trumbull, and Matteson was coming perilously close to election. Determined that the anti-Nebraska cause should prevail, Lincoln threw his support to Trumbull, who was elected on the tenth ballot.8
One of the anti-Nebraska Democrats who was adamant in his refusal to support Lincoln throughout the voting was Norman B. Judd, the powerful Chicago lawyer who two years later would invite Lincoln to join him in the Effie Afton trial. Lincoln was deeply troubled when his early lead in the voting did not result in his victory and anti-Nebraska Democrats like Judd refused to support him. Illinois congressman Elihu B. Washburne later wrote that “no event in Mr. Lincoln’s entire political career brought to him so much disappointment and chagrin as his defeat for United States Senator in 1855.”9 Lincoln consoled himself with the knowledge that he had acted out of principal rather than personal interest. His goal was to strike a strong blow against Kansas-Nebraska and its author, Stephen Douglas, and he could not “let the whole political result go to ruin, on a point merely personal to myself.”10 Later asked if he harbored any enmity against Norman Judd because of his failure to support him, Lincoln said: “I can’t harbor enmity to any one; it’s not in my nature.”11
Lincoln's Greatest Case: The River, the Bridge, and the Making of America Page 9
