Great Fortunes, and How They Were MadeMcCabe, James Dabney
History
Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made
McCabe, James Dabney
United States -- Biography
Fulton followed up the "Clermont," in 1807, with a larger boat, called
the "Car of Neptune," which was placed on the Albany route as soon as
completed. The Legislature of New York had enacted a law, immediately
upon his first success, giving to Livingston and himself the exclusive
right to navigate the waters of the State by steam, for five years for
every additional boat they should build in the State, provided the whole
term should not exceed thirty years. "In the following year the
Legislature passed another act, confirmatory of the prior grants, and
giving new remedies to the grantees for any invasion of them, and
subjecting to forfeiture any vessel propelled by steam which should
enter the waters of the State without their license. In 1809 Fulton
obtained his first patent from the United States; and in 1811 he took
out a second patent for some improvement in his boats and machinery. His
patents were limited to the simple means of adapting paddle wheels to
the axle of the crank of Watt's engine.
"Meanwhile the power of the Legislature to grant the steamboat monopoly
was denied, and a company was formed at Albany to establish another line
of steam passage boats on the Hudson, between that city and New York.
The State grantees filed a bill in equity, and prayed for an injunction,
which was refused by Chancellor Lansing, on the ground that the act of
the State Legislature was repugnant to the Constitution of the United
States, and against common right. This decree was unanimously reversed
by the Court of Errors, and a compromise was effected with the Albany
company by an assignment to them of the right to employ steam on the
waters of Lake Champlain.
"Legislative aid was again invoked, and an act was passed directing
peremptorily the allowance of an injunction on the prayer of the State
grantees, and the seizure of any hostile boat at the commencement of the
suit. Litigation was thus effectually arrested in New York, though by an
arbitrary and unconstitutional enactment, and the waters of the State
remained in the exclusive possession of Fulton and his partner during
the lifetime of the former. A similar controversy with Colonel Aaron
Ogden, of New Jersey, was compromised by advantageous concessions, which
converted the opponent of the monopoly into its firmest friend, and left
him many years afterward the defeated party in the famous suit of
Gibbons and Ogden, in the Supreme Court of the United States."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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