Lincoln's Greatest Case
Author | : Brian Mcginty |
Publisher | : National Geographic Books |
Total Pages | : 0 |
Release | : 2016-02-16 |
ISBN-10 | : 9781631491474 |
ISBN-13 | : 1631491474 |
Rating | : 4/5 (74 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: The untold story of how one sensational trial propelled a self-taught lawyer and a future president into the national spotlight. 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.