The Rock Island Line. Bill Marvel
officially turned over the Chicago & Rock Island to its directors. Some track still awaited ballast, and a couple stations had not been finished; however, it was already a working, profitable business. In fact, more engines and cars were needed to handle traffic. Directors voted the necessary funds and elected Henry Farnam president. Farnam’s financial associate, Joseph Sheffield, 61, wanted to devote his remaining years to philanthropy. One of his last official acts was to arrange for a first-day excursion train on the Peoria & Bureau Valley, now leased to the Rock Island. In November, he retired. To take his place, Farnam chose the energetic and ambitious Thomas Durant.
Beyond the end of track rolled the waters of the Mississippi, and plans were already in place to cross them. A group of the road’s directors had obtained a charter from the legislature for the Railroad Bridge Company. Farnam was president and chief engineer, and its bonds were guaranteed by the Chicago & Rock Island and the Mississippi & Missouri railroads. The new company would construct the Illinois side of the bridge to mid-channel; M&M would build the Iowa side, with the ever-helpful Antoine LeClair donating the needed land. Construction would occur in three segments: a short span across The Slough, right-of-way across Rock Island, and the main section. The wooden Howe truss superstructure would march across the river to Davenport on six granite piers, the largest anchoring a pivoting center span on the Illinois side.
The eastbound local behind GP7 No. 4517 makes its leisurely way along the banks of the Illinois River at Peru on June 8, 1975. The river, the railroad, and the nearby Illinois and Michigan Canal once made this a thriving port. Bill Marvel
Abe Lincoln for the Defense
The wreck of the Effie Afton in the darkness of May 6, 1856, had consequences far beyond the destruction of a boat and damage to a bridge.
The boat, valued at $50,000, was a complete loss. Of the cattle she carried, a few found their way to shore—the rest were swept downstream by the brisk current. Fortunately, all passengers escaped before fire, caused by the embers from an overturned stove, swept the superstructure. As for the railroad bridge the boat hit, the fire destroyed one span and the impact of the boat damaged the pier. It would remain closed four months for repairs. Passengers from the two daily passenger trains and the contents of hundreds of freight cars would have to be ferried across the river.
After the incident, folks in Rock Island and Davenport wondered what the Effie Afton was even doing on the river. She was an Ohio River boat, her usual run was between New Orleans and Louisville. This was her first trip on the upper Mississippi, and she was running after dark, a time when many steamboats tied up. There were rumors that she had been packed with combustibles and deliberately rammed into the pier by her captain, John Hurd.
Hurd, who was also the boat’s part-owner, filed suit in U.S. Circuit Court in Chicago, the Honorable John McLean presiding. He asked damages and that the court order the bridge demolished as a menace to navigation and a public nuisance.
The case was crucial, and Rock Island’s president, Henry Farnam, wanted the best legal talent he could find. “There is only one man in this country who can take this case and win it,” said Norman B. Judd, the road’s general counsel. “And that is Abraham Lincoln.”
As a member of the Whig Party, Lincoln had voted in favor of pro-railroad legislation. “No other improvement,” he had said during an 1832 speech, “can equal the utility of the railroad.” In 1849 he had returned to Illinois after a single term in the U.S. Congress and built up a lucrative law practice representing railroads. In a celebrated 1854 case, he managed to get Illinois Central exempted from county property taxes.
Lincoln approached Hurd et al. vs. Railroad Bridge Co. with his customary thoroughness and imagination. He studied survey charts of the river prepared earlier by a young army officer named Robert E. Lee. Then he visited the site of the wreck, sitting on a bridge stringer with a local 12-year-old boy, dropping a weighted string into the water to measure the current.
Illinois attorney Abraham Lincoln. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
As the railroad’s lead counsel, Lincoln delivered the final argument in the Chicago courtroom on Tuesday, September 22, 1857. The evidence, he said, clearly established that the wreck could not have happened as Captain Hurd had testified. Either Hurd had been careless and negligent, or the boat had been defective. As to the bridge obstructing navigation, Lincoln told the jury, the railroad operated year-round while river traffic halted in winter. If the Republic was to thrive, commerce, which flowed as much east to west as north to south, would depend on railroads.
The jury was unable to decide, and before the case could be retried, the plaintiffs dropped their suit. There were further legal challenges to the bridge by steamboat interests, one of them finally finding its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where justices in 1862 found for the railroad and the bridge. The principle enunciated by Abraham Lincoln in that Chicago courtroom six years before was affirmed: The railroad has as good a right to cross a river as a steamboat has to sail upon its waters.
One oddity Rock Island didn’t buy: No. 920, a standard Fiat Model 668.920 railcar, demonstrated on the suburban district in summer and fall 1977. The hope was that the “Ravioli Rocket,” as it was dubbed, would cut expenses on off-time suburban runs. Apparently, it didn’t. Author collection
In September 1854, the cornerstone was set in place in Davenport.
Almost immediately there was an outcry from steamboat interests along the river who protested that the bridge would interfere with navigation. U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis also opposed the bridge, for his own reasons. Its completion, he realized, would give impetus to a proposed northern transcontinental railroad route, isolating the South. Davis pressed the U.S. attorney for southern Illinois to file for an injunction, and in July 1855, the case of United States v. Bridge Company et al. came before U.S. Circuit Court. There John McLean, assistant justice of the Supreme Court, decided in the bridge’s favor. Within nine months, the work was finished. On April 21, 1856, as Henry Farnam watched from the shore, Rock Island locomotive Fort Des Moines rolled across the 1,528-foot-long structure and into the Davenport depot. Two days later, to the sound of clanging church bells, regular service began between Rock Island and Davenport. Seven other railroads had reached the Mississippi, but only Rock Island had crossed it.
The steamboat interests did not surrender. On May 6, two weeks after the bridge opened to traffic, the steamboat Effie Afton, bound for St. Paul out of St. Louis with passengers, lumber, and livestock, passed upstream through the draw. The current was strong, and she had made only about 200 feet when a paddlewheel failed. Adrift, the boat fishtailed to starboard, slipped back, slammed into a pier, and caught fire. Flames destroyed the boat and one of the bridge’s spans. Owners of the Effie Afton promptly filed suit for damages, but loss of the steamboat wasn’t the issue. Damage to the steamboat interests was, and the suit’s ultimate objective was the removal of the bridge and the competition it represented.
Coming up Fifth Street in Davenport, Iowa, on July 1, 1978, Silvis-rebuild GP7 No. 4515 leads another Silvis grad, a Conrail geep, on a shakedown run, westward toward Council Bluffs. The crossover in the foreground leads to the Kansas City line at the Missouri Division junction. John Dziobko
The dispute labored through the courts for six years—in the early stages the Rock Island was represented by a promising young attorney, Abraham Lincoln—until 1862, when the U.S. Supreme Court found for the railroad and the bridge. The decision effectively represented