Lincoln's Greatest Case: The River, the Bridge, and the Making of America

The untold story of how one sensational trial propelled a self-taught lawyer and a future president into the national spotlight.

In the early hours of May 6, 1856, the steamboat Effie Afton barreled into a pillar of the Rock Island Bridge—the first railroad bridge ever to span the Mississippi River. Soon after, the newly constructed vessel, crowded with passengers and livestock, erupted into flames and sank in the river below, taking much of the bridge with it.

As lawyer and Lincoln scholar B...