SCOTUS 101
22 AMERICAN HISTORY
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SA FEDERAL TAKE
ON TRADE
At 1 p.m. on August 17, 1807, a 150-foot ves-
sel’s crew cast off from a dock near Greenwich
Village on Manhattan Island, changing the
course of American history. Two 15-foot
steam-driven side wheels powered the ship to
and from Albany on the Hudson River. The
steamship’s introduction made feasible rapid,
reliable transport of raw materials and finished
goods, ushering in the industrial revolution.
States saw in the North River Steamboat of
Clermont and its maiden voyage a path to
prosperity if they could offer steamship routes
on waters within their borders. Some states
were encouraging private road building by
granting exclusive franchises empowering
holders to charge regulated tolls. Doing so for
shipping, states promised investors exclusive
access to rivers between given ports—until
conflicts between franchise-holders led to a
revolution in jurisprudence shifting significant
economic regulatory power from the states to
the federal government, thanks to an 1824 U.S.
Supreme Court case, Gibbons v. Ogden.
Engineer and inventor Robert Fulton
designed the Clermont, run by a company he
organized in partnership with his wife’s uncle,
Robert Livingston. In 1798, with steam power
still theoretical, Livingston got an exclusive to
sail steamships on rivers across New York.
Livingston and the state extended that license
in 1803—coincidentally, the year that Living-
ston, as President Thomas Jefferson’s emissary
to France, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase.
New York renewed his license in 1808, when
company ships met a state demand to achieve
at least five miles per hour under power. The
shipping company grew. Within five years
Fulton and Livingston had ships working six
major rivers and Chesapeake Bay. Rivals were
locking up franchises elsewhere.
In 1815, under its New York license, the Liv-
ingston-Fulton company subcontracted with
Aaron Ogden. A former governor of New Jersey,
Ogden had partnered with Georgia planter
Thomas Gibbons on a shipping company. That
scheme collapsed when, on his own, Gibbons
began running between Elizabethtown, New
Jersey, and New York City a competing steam-
ship, Bellona. Gibbons had registered Bellona
under the federal Coasting Act of 1793, which
required licenses of all commercial vessels ply-
ing the country’s coasts. Ogden, citing his
license under the monopoly awarded the Liv-
ingston-Fulton company, asked New York State
BY DANIEL B. MOSKOWITZ
GIBBONS V.
OGDEN
22 U.S. 1 (1824)
INTERSTATE
COMMERCE
CLAUSE
Roll, Tide
Steamship Clermont
unleashed economic
energies that John
Marshall, as chief
justice, had to try to
contain in law.