[Fulton, Robert, and Robert Livingston]:

$1,500 · Offered by William Reese Company

THE RIGHT OF A STATE TO GRANT EXCLUSIVE PRIVILEGES, IN ROADS, BRIDGES, CANALS, NAVIGABLE WATERS, &c. VINDICATED; BY A CANDID EXAMINATION OF THE GRANT FROM THE STATE OF NEW-YORK TO, AND CONTRACT WITH ... This legal argument was written on behalf of steamboat inventor Robert Fulton and his business partner Robert Livingston in support of their claim for a continued monopoly on navigation on the rivers of New York State. Fulton and Livingston first partnered in the 1790s and in 1798 secured a monopoly for the navigation of New York rivers. The monopoly was renewed in 1803 and extended again in 1808. Rival steamboat entrepreneurs decried the monopoly, and Fulton and Livingston were challenged in 1811 over their exclusive right. This pamphlet argues in favor of the State of New York's right to grant Fulton and Livingston a monopoly. Their monopoly was indeed continued until 1824, when the case of Gibbons v. Ogden asserted that the federal government had greater power over interstate commerce than the individual states, and such state-granted monopolies were broken.

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