The success of Lincoln and his colleagues in defending the Rock Island Bridge also made the bridge and the railroads that crossed it important players in moving troops and freight during the Civil War. Fighting along the river brought normal steamboat traffic to a virtual halt while railroad traffic over the Rock Island Bridge continued, even accelerated. Throughout the conflict, trains crossed over the Mississippi at Rock Island, moving passengers and freight. When President Lincoln first called for a volunteer regiment from Iowa, ten times the required number of Iowans responded. Every call for volunteers from Iowa was met with enthusiasm, so by the end of the fighting Iowa could boast that more than seventy-six thousand of its men, including forty-six Iowa regiments, four batteries of light artillery, nine regiments of cavalry, and thousands of replacement units, had served in the Union Army.13
The railroads of the North greatly exceeded those of the South in the mileage covered, permitting Union forces to move over long distances and providing efficient transportation routes for the massive amounts of provisions, supplies, equipment, and armaments they needed to sustain their efforts.14 By itself, the Rock Island Bridge was not essential to Union victory, but as part of a massive—and ever expanding—network of rails extending from the Atlantic seaboard across the Mississippi and beyond, it contributed significantly to the Union Army’s military successes. The Civil War was, in fact, the “first true railroad war” in history, with iron rails carrying fighting men and all that it takes to sustain them on a scale never before seen in history.15
The fighting between the North and South drew to a close as Union General Ulysses S. Grant accepted the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865. Lincoln’s life was ended by an assassin’s bullet in Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and the institution of slavery was brought to a final end in the United States with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution on December 6, 1865. All of this happened before the golden spike was driven into the last tie uniting the eastern and western halves of the Pacific Railway at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869. But the golden spike symbolized the triumph of an idea and the force behind it.
The Rock Island Bridge proved to be a durable survivor, even after it was partially destroyed by the Effie Afton. As locomotives and cars increased in weight and speed, and as the volume of the traffic that crossed the bridge grew, the span was strengthened, first by the addition of suspension cables that enhanced the load-bearing capacities of the timber trusses, then by the replacement of the original, flat-topped trusses with higher and heavier trusses that formed arches at the top of each of the spans. All of this work was done on the original piers and with only minimal interruptions to the flow of train traffic across the river.16
Then, in March 1868, the bridge was struck by two natural disasters. The first was a massive ice floe brought down the river by the severe cold of the winter and then exacerbated by heavy rains and an early thaw that cracked the ice, formed it into what the Davenport Gazette described as “icebergs,” and created a kind of a gorge between the two banks of the river. The ice crashed into the bridge, damaging the piers and the spans above them so badly that trains could not pass over.17 Engineers and a crew of workers were promptly summoned from Chicago to lay rails down to the river from the depots in Rock Island and Davenport so freight could be carried across the river by ferries while repairs were begun.18 Then, just six days later, the bridge was hit by a wind so fierce that the Gazette called it a tornado.19 Six men were on the span when the wind struck; three were injured, and one was sent to his death in the icy water below.20 Nature in the form of ice and wind had spoken louder than any of the steamboat men or lawyers ever could. Defiant of the twin disasters, railroad officials and engineering crews worked furiously to rebuild the bridge, and just over six weeks later they were able to reopen it to rail traffic.21 The Gazette called the rebuilding effort “a speedy and thorough operation” that evidenced “great skill” on the part of the bridge managers and engineers.22
Even before this work was completed, however, plans were afoot to replace the entire bridge with a new structure. These plans arose in part from the government’s wish to expand the arsenal it had established on Rock Island during the war and make more of the island available for buildings and roadways, in part from an awareness by both government officials and railroad engineers that the bridge needed to be more stable and better positioned. As early as June 27, 1866, Congress authorized the construction of a new bridge, to be located at the western end of the island, about 1,500 feet downriver from the original site.23 The government and the Rock Island Railroad—officially known as the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company after August 1866—formally agreed that the new span would be owned by the government but financed and maintained by both the government and the railroad, which was granted a right-of-way across the new structure and free use of it for its trains.24
In 1867, Congress appropriated $200,000 for the erection of the bridge, on the express condition that the railroad first secure its required payment of half of the cost of construction and maintenance.25 In 1868, the federal lawmakers authorized the secretary of war to begin the construction of the new bridge on the understanding that after it was ready for use, the railroad company would remove the old bridge and the old railroad track leading up to it. At the same time Congress specified that its total expenditure on the project should not exceed $1 million.26 Welcoming the government as partners in the new span, the railroad promptly complied with its obligations, providing half of the cost of construction and maintenance and removing the old bridge from the island and the river channel.
Built of iron and now called the Government Bridge, the new structure had two decks. The lower was designed to accommodate wagons and horses, while the upper supported a single railroad track. Two walkways, each five feet wide, extended beyond the trusses on either side of the lower deck to accommodate foot traffic.27 Extending from Rock Island to Davenport, the bridge was a little more than 1,600 feet long.28 It rested on six piers that rose from the riverbed. Like its predecessor, the new bridge permitted steamboats and other river traffic to pass through a draw span, 366 feet long and operated by two hydraulic jacks. Unlike the earlier structure, however, the draw span was located next to the island shoreline rather than over the main river channel.29 Completed in 1872, the Government Bridge was formally transferred to the Rock Island Arsenal in February 1873.30
The new bridge stood for more than twenty years, at which time it was apparent that a stronger and heavier span was needed to support the larger locomotives and rail cars of the era. In 1895, construction was begun on a new bridge designed by a young Polish-born engineer named Ralph Modjeski who, from his base in Chicago, would later design iconic bridges over the Hudson River in New York, the Delaware River in Philadelphia, the Detroit River between Michigan and Ontario, Canada, and San Francisco Bay in California.31 Resting on the existing piers, the new bridge consisted of all-steel trusses and an all-steel swing span. Like its predecessor, it had two decks, an upper level with tracks that would accommodate two-way train traffic and a lower level for road traffic. Completed in 1896, the new bridge was still owned by the federal government, still called the Government Bridge, and still open to the use of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad.32
For a while, the bridge accommodated street trolleys as well as trains. The Rock Island Railroad continued to use the span as its locomotives raced from Chicago across the Mississippi and on to distant destinations in Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, and even—by a joint agreement with the Southern Pacific Railroad—California. Although the Rock Island ceased its operations in 1980, other railroads continued to use the bridge well into the twenty-first century.
Congress’s willingness to assist railroad corporations to build lines across rivers like the Mississippi, and even across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast, did not aris
e out of hostility to the steamboats, or evidence unwillingness to help them navigate the great rivers. Adopting the argument Lincoln made to the jury in the Effie Afton trial, Congress agreed that there was room for both steamboats on and railroads crossing over the Mississippi. Steamboats could continue to navigate the great river, and railroads could cross it with their spans.
Beginning after the Civil War, Congress authorized extensive river improvement projects designed to deepen the steamboat channels. They straightened the river in places, built levees to prevent flooding in times of high water, erected wing dams to help raise the water level in dry seasons, blasted rock from the river bottom to remove rocks and deepen the channels, and excavated canals to ease the passage of boats over and around rapids, sand bars, and other natural obstructions to navigation. In the 1880s, the Army Corps of Engineers began a program of constant river improvements that continued well into the twenty-first century.33 As a result, the appearance of the river changed mightily. The Mississippi that Mark Twain knew and loved in the middle of the nineteenth century became a nostalgic memory. Steamboat safety was improved, and the river became more hospitable to barges and rafts that moved sand and gravel and coal and oil from one river town to another, but commerce on the river was not appreciably enhanced.
Congress also facilitated the construction of more bridges over the great river. Shortly after it authorized the construction of the first Government Bridge at Rock Island, it laid down rules for future bridges that would be built across the Mississippi. Set forth in an act of Congress approved by President Andrew Johnson in 1866, the rules were initially designed to meet a proposal for the construction of a railroad bridge across the river at Quincy, Illinois. They were quickly expanded to apply to railroad bridges at Burlington, Iowa; Hannibal, Missouri; Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin; Keokuk, Iowa; Winona, Minnesota; Dubuque, Iowa; St. Louis, Missouri; and even Kansas City, Missouri.34 The rules stated that it would be “lawful” to build either a continuous span bridge or a drawbridge at any of those locations, but only if the bridge complied with specific requirements.35
The 1866 act was evidence, if any was needed, that bridges were now being built at key locations up and down the Mississippi, and that many more were planned. The Rock Island had been the first railroad bridge to span the mighty river; despite its legal difficulties, it had proven that such a crossing could effect a marvelous revolution in transportation. Between 1869, the year the Pacific Railway was completed, and 1872, the Rock Island Bridge served as the most direct link across the Mississippi River, connecting the East Coast by way of Chicago with the West Coast via the transcontinental railroad.36 By 1879, more than 85 percent of the farm products shipped from states along the Mississippi went east by rail and only 15 percent by way of the river.37
The 1857 trial that Abraham Lincoln took part in in Chicago, followed by a host of successful legal battles in other courts, had proven not only that such a bridge was legal and could be defended in court against its enemies. It had also helped to prove that the bridge made economic sense, for all the litigation was expensive, but the bridge and the railroad that spanned it continued to make money. By 1880, thirteen railroad bridges had crossed the Mississippi between St. Louis and St. Paul;38 by 1886, the number had grown to fifteen, and by 1888, sixteen.39
St. Louis, once the economic powerhouse of the Mississippi Valley, was left behind, a laggard in the race to acquire railroad connections. There were, of course, powerful men in the Missouri city who, from the first, understood that railroads would one day be an important part of the transportation network that was rapidly spreading across the upper Midwest. They strove valiantly to bring down the Rock Island Bridge, but they were not averse to building such a bridge to connect their own city with the east bank of the river. The suspension bridge that Josiah Bissell designed before 1857 proved that there was interest in railroads in St. Louis. But the money men of the river city fought among themselves for the glory (and the profit) of building the first railroad bridge, and Bissell’s plan, as well as many others, fell by the wayside.
Competing bridge projects were announced in the early 1860s, but the funds necessary to make them a reality were not forthcoming.40 It was not until 1867 that work was actually begun on a railroad bridge at St. Louis. It was designed by James Eads, a successful businessman who had spent many years on the Mississippi as a salvager, diving to the bottom of the river to rescue wrecked steamboats and other craft that had come to grief in the river and sunk in murky waters.41 Eads had never designed a bridge, but he knew the river bottom, and he knew it well. The bridge that he planned for St. Louis was much different from the Rock Island Bridge, or any other Mississippi River span built up to that time. It had massive stone piers sunk deep in the river channel and soaring spans of steel that arched high above the surface of the water. Opened in 1874, the Eads Bridge was the first permanent crossing of the Mississippi River below its confluence with the Missouri River.42 It was immediately acclaimed as an engineering wonder, but the railroads that crossed it into Illinois did not make as much money as Eads or his backers expected, and within a year the bridge fell into receivership.43 Trains still used it—in greater and greater numbers as the years passed by—while steamboat traffic declined. By 1890, the total rail business out of St. Louis was twelve times the river traffic; by 1900, it was thirty-two times; by 1906, it was one hundred times.44
Bridges came more slowly to the Lower Mississippi. The first bridge to cross the river south of the mouth of the Ohio was opened at Memphis in 1892. A bridge was opened at Vicksburg in 1930 and at New Orleans in 1935. By the end of the twentieth century, more than two hundred bridges spanned the Mississippi from its headwaters in Minnesota to its mouth below New Orleans.45
From the time the railroads first crossed the Mississippi, farm produce and passenger transport, at one time the mainstays of steamboat business on the river, declined rapidly. Trains were so much faster, so much more dependable, and at the same time so much more economical, that river traffic found it harder and harder to compete. The endless destinations that could be reached by railroads and the fact that trains could run almost all year round, while steamboats could not proceed through ice or over shallow riverbeds when the water level was low, added to the steamboats’ woes. A new America was being forged. It was one in which the railroads played a key role. Powerful locomotives on iron rails were racing forward, while ponderous steamboats on winding rivers were steadily losing ground.
One kind of business that favored the river traffic continued even after the others had nearly disappeared, however. Lumber from the forests of Minnesota and Wisconsin, essential to build new homes for the growing population of the Mississippi Valley and beyond, was ideally suited to river transportation, for logs are wood and wood floats on water. Great quantities of northern lumber were floated down the Mississippi on rafts and barges from 1870 to 1915. But the timber harvesting practices of the period were savage and unforgiving, with clear-cutting prevailing almost everywhere. When the forests at last disappeared, so did the logs, and so did lumber rafting on the Mississippi.46 By 1915, river transportation had ceased to be a competitive—or even very important—part of inland transportation in the United States.47
It had been a long and bitter struggle between the railroads and the steamboats, but the railroads in the end prevailed. The jurors that heard Lincoln’s Effie Afton argument in Chicago in 1857 had been unable to reach a legally binding verdict: they clearly favored the bridge over the steamboat, but not unanimously. They were hung. Only a few decades later, however, the sequence of events compelled a decision the jurors could not make. The railroads, and the bridge that first carried them across the great river, had won. History had rendered its verdict.
While history was rendering its verdict on the railroads and the bridges, it was also rendering a verdict on the Springfield attorney who helped to defend the first railroad bridge built over the river. By the early twentieth century, Abraham Lincoln had become a
towering figure in an almost mythical American past, a martyred president remembered as the Savior of the Union and the Great Emancipator. Other parts of the Lincoln story were also being recognized, however: his work to make the nation economically strong and healthy; his championing of roads and schools and railroads; and his work as a courtroom advocate.
The story of the Effie Afton case adds a measure of real history to the heroic Lincoln mythology. It reminds us that before he went to Washington, Lincoln was also a resourceful lawyer who, in a crowded Chicago courtroom in 1857, helped to bind the nation together with iron rails, to bridge the mightiest river on the continent, and to turn the nation toward an economic future of strength and vitality. In these ways, too, he contributed mightily to the making of America.
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Lincoln was photographed by Alexander Hesler in Chicago on February 28, 1857, a little more than six months before the beginning of the Effie Afton trial.
2. In 1837, Lieutenant Robert E. Lee of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was sent to the Upper Mississippi to make a survey and recommend methods to remove obstructions to navigation at St. Louis and in the Des Moines and Rock Island Rapids.
3. This map of the Rock Island Rapids was prepared by Lee with the assistance of Lieutenant Montgomery Meigs and a German mapmaker named Henry Kayser.
4. Like Lincoln, future Confederate president Jefferson Davis saw military service at Rock Island during the Black Hawk War of 1832. As U.S. secretary of war from 1853 to 1857, Davis fought to stop construction of the Rock Island Bridge, believing that a southern rather than a northern railroad crossing of the Mississippi would help to plant slavery in the Southwest. Davis’s opposition to the bridge that Lincoln defended foreshadowed the opposition he would lead against Lincoln’s efforts to save the Union during the Civil War.
Lincoln's Greatest Case: The River, the Bridge, and the Making of America Page 22
