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

2: Origins of the Fulton-Livingston Monopoly

CHAPTER 2 Origins of the Fulton-Livingston Monopoly “A New State of Things Is Rising Up” “T   will long be remembered as an auspicious era in the history of our state. A new state of things is rising up,” declared the New York Columbian on January , . Expounding on the greatness of the Empire State, the article boasted, “She is capable of unfolding her immense resources, in every noble improvement but connected with civil policy, but that she is also capable of uniting her moral strength, and displaying, under the banner of truth, her genius, her virtue, and her power.”₁ Such an optimistic appraisal conveyed the aspirations shared by many early nineteenth-century New Yorkers. Six years of British occupation during the American Revolution had drained New York’s population, flooded its roads with refugees, and depressed its economy. By the s, however, the region bustled with new economic life. The tight fiscal policies of Treasure Secretary Alexander Hamilton encouraged domestic manufacturing. The forcible removal of Native Americans from their ancestral homes in central and western New York opened up land to speculators who resold it to white settlers. And recognition of American independence granted New Yorkers access to French, Spanish, and eventually British markets. In addition, European conflicts created a demand for American  foodstuffs and flooded New York City with cheap immigrant labor. The city soon became a clearinghouse for upstate produce, New England textiles, Virginia tobacco, and Deep South cotton destined for export overseas.² Increased commercialization also brought a new generation of merchants and attorneys who championed the goals of delayed gratification and capital acquisition. Professionally trained stockbrokers aggressively haggled over commodities at the Tontine Coffee House at the intersection of Wall and Water streets. Lawyers began to specialize in banking, incorporation, insurance, and patent law. From the s to the s, the New York state legislature actively promoted the development of canals, turnpikes, and post roads; the dredging of rivers; and the creation of new inventions such as steamboats.³ No individual epitomized the changes in New York society more than Governor DeWitt Clinton. As a young attorney, Clinton learned the art of political survival while serving as personal secretary to his uncle, George Clinton, the only colonial governor to retain his office throughout the American Revolution. His imposing physique and penchant for quoting Greek and Roman classics while opposing ratification of the U.S. Constitution in  gained him the lifelong nickname “Magnus Apollo.” He became a popular Republican mayor of New York City, a U.S. senator, and New York lieutenant governor. Yet his opposition to Thomas Jefferson’s embargo policies, his lukewarm stance to the War of , and his failed run for the U.S. presidency in  left Clinton out of power. The resourceful politician created a new public identity as a commissioner and champion of the Erie Canal, a massive engineering project designed to connect the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. Clinton became New York governor in , and for the next eight years, he commissioned legions of mostly immigrant laborers to complete a seven-hundred-mile “ditch” from the Hudson River to Buffalo. The canal carved a wide swath through the New York backcountry and through the popular imagination of New Yorkers, seeming to herald a new era of scienti fic, economic, and social progress.⁴ To be certain, the commercialization of the Empire State was neither seamless nor inevitable. “Putting out systems,” in which nonspecialized workers focused on a single task in the completion of a final product, existed in tension with artisan shops until the eve of the Civil War. Mechanics, backcountry farmers , and landed tenants effectively used republican rhetoric and informal methods of resistance to defend traditional ways of life well into the s. Yet as ordinary Americans turned to wage labor to subsidize family businesses and cash crops to preserve family homesteads, the market became ever more intertwined with  Gibbons v. Ogden, Law and Society their lives. Even many provincial landowners, the traditional power brokers in agrarian society, looked to the market for income to offset the falling values of their ancestral lands, the traditional source of their prestige. As a result, a considerable number of country squires agreed with the author of the New York Columbian article that the classical republican values of “truth,” “genius,” and “virtue” could be supported, not destroyed, by the “power” of economic growth. After...