Alton and Sangamon Railroad Company

State: Illinois

The Illinois General Assembly chartered the Alton and Sangamon Railroad in 1847. Construction on the railroad began in 1852 and eventually completed a link between Alton, Illinois and Springfield, Illinois in 1853. The Alton and Sangamon Railroad connected with the Chicago & Mississippi Railroad in 1855, and the two were combined to form the Chicago, Alton, & St. Louis Railroad. After a reorganization of the company, the Illinois legislature rechartered the railroad as the St. Louis, Alton, & Chicago Railroad on January 21, 1857. In the 1850s, Abraham Lincoln represented the Alton & Sangamon Railroad Company in seven cases in the Sangamon County Circuit Court, and in the appeals of four of them in Illinois Supreme Court. In 1861, the railroad became part of the Chicago & Alton Railroad.

"An Act to Construct a Railroad from Alton, in Madison County, to Springfield, in Sangamon County," 29 February 1847, Private and Special Laws of Illinois (1847), 144-49; Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Sangamon County (Chicago: Munsell, 1912), 1:100; Gene V. Glendinning, The Chicago and Alton Railroad: The Only Way (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002), 7, 38-39, 45, 62; For Lincoln's cases involving the Alton and Sangamon Railroad Company, search "Alton & Sangamon RR," Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org.