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Show 10 granting to Fulton and Livingston the exclusive right of navi- gation by steamboat of all the waters within the State. Other coastal states also passed laws purporting to grant exclusive rights for use of navigable waters to private interests.22 Ensu- ing conflicts among the states so hampered the flow of inter- state commerce as nearly to precipitate civil war.23 But these threats of steamboat monopoly were short-lived, for the Supreme Court of the United States soon called a halt to such attempts at legislative encroachment by the states upon the recent exclusive grant of commerce power to the Con- gress. A conflict arose between Thomas Gibbons, holding a federal license to engage in coastal trade, and Aaron Ogden, claiming as assignee of the exclusive rights of Fulton and Livingston to navigation between Elizabethtown and New York, under their grant of authority by New York. Ogden succeeded in having Gibbons enjoined from navigating waters within the territory of New York, and the decree was affirmed by the highest court of law and equity in New York.24 When the case reached the Supreme Court of the United States, the lower court was reversed in 1824, and Mr. Chief Justice Marshall handed down the most famous of all opinions on the Commerce Clause, Gibbons v. Ogden, saying:26 The power of congress • ? ? comprehends navi- gation within the limits of every State in the Union, so far as that navigation may be, in any manner, connected with "commerce with foreign nations, or among the several States, or with the Indian tribes." In harmony with this holding, the Court in 1851 rejected a similar effort to justify construction of a bridge under state law over the Ohio River obstructing navigation, where such a 4 Beveridge, Life of John Marshall, 414 (1919). M1 Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, 598 (rev. ed. 1937). u Giblons v. Ogden, 17 Johns. 488 (N. Y. 1820). * 9 Wheat. 1, 197 (U. S. 1824). See also 4 Beveridge, Life of John Mar- shall, 418 (1919); 2 Warren, The Supreme Court in United States His- tory, 76 (1924). For an earlier decision by Marshall foreshadowing the Gibbons opinion, see The Wilson v. United States, 30 Fed. Cas. No. 17,846 (C. C. D. Va. 1820). |