Gibbons v. Ogden, Law, and Society in the Early Republic

7: The Road to the U.S. Supreme Court

 CHAPTER 7 The Road to the U.S. Supreme Court The Growing Importance of Steam Travel C K’  provided Ogden with a sorely needed victory. But the spread of steamboats across the United States made the future of the New York monopoly ever more precarious. The steamboat Henrietta now plied the Cape Fear River between Fayetteville and Wilmington, North Carolina. Promoters launched the five-hundred-ton Western Enquirer, from Noah Brown’s Pittsburgh shipyard, to navigate the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The steamboat Walk on the Water offered service on the Great Lakes from Buffalo to Detroit. And the steamboat Hartford, complete with a “revolving engine,” ferried passengers from New Haven to Boston. Newspaper articles and petitions to the New York legislature repeatedly called for the repeal of the steamboat monopoly.₁ Yet despite the need for unity, monopoly supporters remained bitterly divided . Edward P. Livingston demanded obedience from the employees and shareholders of the North River Steam Boat Company in much the same way his father-in-law had expected deference from his landed tenants thirty years earlier. When Livingston sued for his share of corporate profits, Chancellor Kent placed the North River Company in receivership and appointed New York merchant  The Road to the U.S. Supreme Court Charles Rhind as manager. Rhind’s meticulous record keeping, aggressive public relations work, and strict handling of employee disputes bought time for the beleaguered corporation. In the long run, however, his efforts failed to quell public perceptions that the New York monopoly was a remnant of aristocratic privilege and a barrier to free trade. Across New York Harbor, John R. Livingston and Aaron Ogden fared little better in their efforts to thwart Thomas Gibbons. Livingston and Ogden secured several injunctions against Gibbons in the hopes of bringing their rival to the bargaining table. Ogden also caught Gibbons off balance with a trespassing suit in the New Jersey Court of Common Pleas. As it turned out, both state and federal judges proved reluctant to rule on the increasingly volatile steamboat issue and urged Gibbons and Ogden to settle their differences privately. But such tactics only furthered Gibbons’s desire to pursue his case to Washington, DC, where a final confrontation before the U.S. Supreme Court would finally decide the fate of the New York steamboat monopoly.² The North River Steam Boat Company faced its first major challenge in spring  when Edward P. Livingston tried to forge an alliance with the North River steamboat captains. He ordered the captains to deposit their fares in his private bank accounts. Those skippers who complied would receive a large pay raise; those who refused would lose their jobs. “This is certainly a novel mode of doing business—In one hand a rod, in the other a bribe,” Dominick Lynch wryly noted.³ Livingston also colluded with A. N. Hoffman, a company clerk, to sell dry goods transported on company vessels and pocket the profits. In retaliation, Lynch secured loyalty oaths from the boat captains, fired Hoffman, and spearheaded a corporate resolution to prevent further malfeasance.⁴ In early June, Edward P. Livingston reminded Lynch of his inheritance claims to one-fourth of the North River Company. He also cryptically warned that should any stockholders question these claims, “I rely on your candor to furnish me with their Lieutenants, or those of their counsel as frankly as I have done” so that “I may be enabled to decide on the proper course to be pursued.”₅ Struggles for Control While Dominick Lynch struggled to strengthen the New York monopoly, Thomas Gibbons worked to tear it down. Bound by the terms of his chancery court injunction, Gibbons signed a contract with Daniel D. Tompkins in May  that was designed to circumvent the law. Tompkins’s steamboat Nautilus would rendezvous with Gibbons’s Bellona at Great Kills Harbor on Staten Island and exchange passengers and cargo.₆ Although the partners were to split the profits equally, the route from Elizabethtown to Staten Island was far more costly. Gibbons therefore ordered Cornelius Vanderbilt to run the Bellona from New Jersey to New York City whenever feasible.⁷ Ogden and John R. Livingston quickly learned of Gibbons’s plan and demanded that the New York sheriff arrest Gibbons and Vanderbilt for violation of the monopoly. Although Gibbons remained safely out of reach in New Jersey, Vanderbilt kept up a dangerous game of hide...