Lawyer And President Of The United States

Rails and the West.

Before Abraham Lincoln decided to enter electoral politics, a decision that ultimately led to his election as the sixteenth president of the United States in 1860 and his assassination in Ford's Theater in 1865, he rose to prominence as a Western lawyer. During that phase of his life he recognized that railroads were the principle engine of internal development and improvement in the West, a notion that was on the mark. Between 1830 and 1860 railroads provided the most dependable, efficient, and least expensive means of transporting agricultural products, commercial goods, information, and people. Their routes determined whether towns flourished or died. Chicago, Illinois, provided the prime example of the former. As late as 1850 the city had practically no rail lines. Within five years the construction of more than two thousand miles of rail transformed the city...