Review by Booklist Review
For laymen, the subject of Lincoln the lawyer usually conjures up images of the folksy attorney defending a helpless but innocent client against trumped-up charges. But after serving a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Lincoln became a very successful attorney in Illinois by representing powerful business interests, especially railroads. In 1856, a steamboat was destroyed after colliding with a railroad bridge. The steamboat owners sued the railroad owners for damages, and Lincoln defended the railroads in a 15-day trial, which ended in a hung jury. McGinty, an attorney and a historian, illustrates the wider implications of the case, as it pitted the traditional mode of inland travel by river against the emerging utility and influence of rail travel. The trial itself saw Lincoln at his best mixing a simple country lawyer humility with a razor-sharp intellect and excellent grasp of the facts. McGinty has provided an interesting account of an episode important for both our national development and the advancement of Lincoln's career.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Despite a subtitle that suggests excessive hype, McGinty (Lincoln and the Court) makes good on his promise to articulate why a now obscure 1857 trial had much broader significance than one would expect of legal battle over transportation. What came to be known as the Effie Afton case began with the crash of the steamboat of that name on the Mississippi River between Illinois and Iowa. While no one was injured, the collision with a railroad bridge destroyed the boat-which had been transporting cargo and freight valued at $350,000-and its owners sued the company responsible for the construction and placement of the bridge. Abraham Lincoln, who was already a well-regarded lawyer, was hired to assist with the defense. McGinty illuminates the case's larger issues related to the conflict between two modes of commercial travel (by water and by rail), while also demonstrating how decisions concerning transportation had an impact on the simmering tensions between North and South over slavery shortly before the Civil War erupted. This is a masterful popular history that places its focal point in a richly detailed wider context and will get readers interested in Lincoln's legal career. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Starred Review. Distinguished Lincoln scholar and lawyer McGinty (The Body of John Merryman: Abraham Lincoln and the Suspension of Habeas Corpus) makes a powerful case that Lincoln's involvement in arguing for the right of a railroad company to build a bridge over the Mississippi River, in the famous Effie Afton trial when a steamboat crashed into a bridge, reflected Lincoln's commitment to the transportation revolution that was opening the American West and promising to bind the nation together. The eventual "victory" of the railroad over the steamboat shifted commerce to an east-west flow that directed American growth and secured the West for the North in sectional ties. With detailed descriptions of river and railroad traffic, commercial interests, law, courtroom strategies, and the sectional politics of transportation policy, McGinty provides valuable context unavailable anywhere else and a deep understanding of the dynamic and contested legal, commercial, and political world that informed Lincoln's support for westward expansion and economic development, shaped his ideas on law, and honed his skills as a lawyer. VERDICT McGinty's book gives us the best accounting of Lincoln, the lawyer, to date. Highly recommended. [For more on Lincoln see Randall Miller's Collection Development feature, "Lincoln, 150 Years On," p. 46.-Ed.]-Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Solid account of the most significant case in Abraham Lincoln's 25-year law career.On May 6, 1856, the steamboat Effie Afton crashed into the Rock Island Bridgethe first railroad bridge across the Mississippi Riverdamaging the span and destroying the vessel and its 350 tons of livestock, machinery and other cargo. The 200 passengers on board were unharmed. The boat operators' ensuing suit for damages sparked an "epochal clash" between the railroadsa new, faster, more economical means of transportand the steamboats then commanding the nation's western waterways. With a focus on the lanky Lincoln, a lawyer for the defense who would become president four years later, historian and attorney McGinty (The Body of John Merryman: Abraham Lincoln and the Suspension of Habeas Corpus, 2011, etc.) recounts the historic 15-day Chicago trial, which involved more than 100 witnesses and ended in a hung jury, paving the way for the dominance of the railroad industry. Despite Lincoln's low self-assessment ("I am not an accomplished lawyer," he said), he proved a persuasive orator, sometimes whittling a piece of wood as he contested testimony and impressing jurors with his detailed knowledge of river currents and other facts in the case. Lincoln may have been awkward and ungainly, writes the author, but his courtroom skills convinced powerful backers that he had a political future. His debates two years later with Illinois Sen. Stephen A. Douglas would prove his springboard to the presidency. Besides detailing the Effie Afton case's importance to Lincoln's career, McGinty offers an excellent view of Mississippi steamboat traffic in the mid-19th century and the coming onrush of the railroads, which would transform how the nation moved passengers and goods. An important footnote in the making of the 16th president. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
