Sammelband of Six Pamphlets on Steam Boats

Cadwallader D. Colden; William Alexander Duer; John Sullivan

Albany : Websters and Skinners, 1818.

Octavo. 6 pamplets bound in one. Contemporary quarter calf over marbled boards, gilt, red leather spine label. Browning and foxing.

Pamphlets on the Fulton Steamboat Company, which litigation over its constitutionality would be tried in the Livingston v. Van Ingen 1817 case and the landmark case Gibbons v. Ogden in 1824 which dealt with the Commerce Clause. Colden, who wrote a biography on Robert Fulton, founder of the Fulton Steamboat Company with Robert Livingston, supported New York State's grant of a monopoly to Fulton for the use of steamboats in New York and later New Jersey waters. John Sullivan and William Alexander Duer, rivals to Fulton’s monopoly, litigated for years the constitutionality of the grant and fought a pamphlet war against Colden as well on the validity of the monopoly.

The Livingston v. Van Ingen court held that Congress had the right to regulate "external" commerce while States had the right to regulate "internal" commerce. However in 1824 the U.S. Supreme Court under John Marshall, ruled that the sole decided source of Congress's power to promulgate the law at issue was the Commerce Clause. The Court answered that “commerce,” was more than mere traffic—that it is the trade of commodities and interpreted “among” as “intermingled with.” This ruling effectively established that Congress had the power to regulate interstate commerce also including the power to regulate interstate navigation.

Pamphlets: Report of the select committee of the house of assembly, to whom was referred the memorial and petition of Aaron Ogden, 1814; 2 copies; Letter of John Sullivan, 1817; A vindication by Cadwallader D. Colden, of the steam boat right granted by the state of New-York. Albany : Websters and Skinners, 1818; The answer of Mr. Sullivan, to the letter and mis-statements of the Hon. Cadwallader D. Colden : as the advocate of the monopoly of steam and fire in navigating the rivers, coasts, and lakes of New York. John L Sullivan; William Alexander Duer; Second edition, Troy: William Parker, 1823; A letter, addressed to Cadwallader D. Colden, Esquire : in answer to the strictures, contained in his "Life of Robert Fulton", upon the report of the select committee, to whom was referred a memorial relative to steam navigation, presented to the Legislature of New-York, at the session of 1814. William Alexander Duer   Albany : E. and E. Hosford, 1817; A reply to Mr. Colden's Vindication of the steam-boat monopoly : with an appendix, containing copies of the most important documents referred to in the argument. William Alexander Duer, Albany : E. and E. Hosford, 1819.

A reading copy of pamphlets that led up to the landmark Supreme Court cse of 1824.