Editing Cyrus McCormick (section)

==Legal controversies and success==
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Another McCormick Company competitor was [[John Henry Manny]] of [[Rockford, Illinois]].  After the [[Manny Reaper]] beat the McCormick version at the [[Exposition Universelle (1855)|Paris Exposition]] of 1855, McCormick filed a lawsuit against Manny for patent infringement.<ref name="lincoln">{{cite journal |title=Lincoln and the McCormick-Manny Case |author=Sarah-Eva Carlson |journal=Illinois History Magazine |date=February 1995 |url=http://www.lib.niu.edu/1995/ihy950230.html |access-date=December 26, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110316021114/http://www.lib.niu.edu/1995/ihy950230.html |archive-date=March 16, 2011 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all}}</ref> McCormick demanded that Manny stop producing reapers, and pay McCormick $400,000.  The trial, originally scheduled for Chicago in September 1855, featured prominent lawyers on both sides. McCormick hired the former U.S. Attorney General [[Reverdy Johnson]] and New York patent attorney Edward Nicholl Dickerson. Manny hired George Harding and [[Edwin Stanton]]. Because the trial was set to take place in Illinois, Harding hired the local Illinois lawyer [[Abraham Lincoln]]. Manny finally won the case on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.<ref>Doris Kearns Goodwin, ''Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln'' (2005) pp. 173–179. [https://archive.org/details/teamofrivalspoli00good/page/173 online]</ref>

[[File:McCormick Twine Binder 1884.jpg|thumb|McCormick [[reaper-binder|reaper and twine binder]] in 1884]]
In 1856, McCormick's factory was producing more than 4,000 reapers each year, mostly sold in the Midwest and West. In 1861, however, Hussey's patent was extended but McCormick's was not. McCormick's outspoken opposition to Lincoln and the anti-slavery Republican party may not have helped his cause. McCormick decided to seek help from the U.S. Congress to protect his patent.<ref>{{cite news |title=The McCormick Reaper Patent |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1861/07/06/news/the-mccormick-reaper-patent.html |newspaper=The New York Times | date=July 6, 1861 |access-date=January 18, 2011}}</ref>

In 1871, the factory burned down in the [[Great Chicago Fire]], but McCormick rebuilt and it reopened in 1873. In 1879, brother Leander changed the company's name from "Cyrus H. McCormick and Brothers" to "McCormick Harvesting Machine Company".<ref>{{cite web |title=The McCormick Family and their Mechanical Reaper |url=http://www.astro.virginia.edu/research/observatories/26inch/history/reaper.php |publisher=Leander McCormick Observatory Museum |access-date=December 28, 2010 |archive-date=July 11, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100711224435/https://www.astro.virginia.edu/research/observatories/26inch/history/reaper.php |url-status=dead}}</ref> To the annoyance of Cyrus, Leander tried to emphasize the contributions of others in the family to the reaper invention, especially their father.<ref name="Sluby" />