of Main Street. The Mahan brothers built a downtown windmill. A new hotel was built. Lexington boomed. By 1865 the first brick block had been erected. On 21 November 1860, the train brought Abraham Lincoln to Lexington, where he spoke a few words of goodbye to his old friends; on 2 May 1865, just before noon, another train passed through Lexington, this one holding Lincoln's body. People v. Chicago and Alton Railroad Company The town of Lexington soon became the focus of a case that would change American legal history. Soon after railroads began servicing the Midwest, it became evident that, if a railroad could unilaterally set its own freight rates, it could soon drain most of the wealth from nearby farmers. The result, in Illinois, was a new state constitution that in 1870 gave the government a role in setting railroad and warehouse rates; the wording and legal arguments behind this part of the new constitution was the work of Bloomington lawyer Ruben M. Benjamin (1833–1917). A test case was needed, and Benjamin settled on Lexington. The Chicago and Alton Railroad only charged four dollars and thirty five cents to ship of lumber from Chicago to Bloomington, but asked for five dollars to ship the same amount of lumber the shorter distance from Chicago to Lexington. In 1871 Benjamin brought suit against the railroad. The railroad responded that it was forced to charge less to ship lumber to Bloomington because there was more competition there than at Lexington. The case worked its way up to the United States Supreme Court where People v. The Chicago and Alton Railroad Company became part of the celebrated Granger Cases, named for the Granges of the Patrons of Husbandry, a group that had argued for rate regulation. These cases, at least for a time, established the right of governments to regulate corporations. President Roosevelt comes to Lexington Of all the events in the history of Lexington, perhaps the best remembered was the day President Theodore Roosevelt came to town. By the afternoon of 15 July 1902, a crowd of twenty thousand people had gathered near the Chicago and Alton tracks. A long grandstand had been erected and covered in red, white and blue. The Chief Executive and hero of San Juan Hill shook hands with the reception committee, but declined to leave the train. Roosevelt gave a brief but rousing talk from the