CHAPTER VIII
COMMERCE MADE FREE
Marshall's decision involved in its consequences the existence of the Union. (John F. Dillon.)
Opposing rights to the same thing cannot exist under the Constitution of our country. (Chancellor Nathan Sanford.)
Sir, we shall keep on the windward side of treason, but we must combine to resist these encroachments,—and that effectually. (John Randolph.)
That uncommon man who presides over the Supreme Court is, in all human probability, the ablest Judge now sitting on any judicial bench in the world. (Martin Van Buren.)
At six o'clock in the evening of August 9, 1803, a curious assembly of curious people was gathered at a certain spot on the banks of the Seine in Paris. They were gazing at a strange object on the river—the model of an invention which was to affect the destinies of the world more powerfully and permanently than the victories and defeats of all the armies that, for a dozen years thereafter, fought over the ancient battle-fields of Europe from Moscow to Madrid. The occasion was the first public exhibition of Robert Fulton's steamboat.
France was once more gathering her strength for the war which, in May, Great Britain had declared upon her; and Bonaparte, as First Consul, was in camp at Boulogne. Fulton had been experimenting for a long time, and the public exhibition now in progress would have been made months earlier had not an accident delayed it. His activities had been reported to Bonaparte, who promptly ordered members of the Institute[1107] to attend the exhibition and report to him on the practicability of the invention, which, he wrote, and in italics, "may change the face of the world."[1108] Prominent, therefore, among the throng were these learned men, doubting and skeptical as mere learning usually is.
More conspicuous than Bonaparte's scientific agents, and as interested and confident as they were indifferent or scornful, was a tall man of distinguished bearing, whose powerful features, bold eyes, aggressive chin, and acquisitive nose indicated a character of unyielding determination, persistence, and hopefulness. This was the American Minister to France, Robert R. Livingston of New York, who, three months before, had conducted the Louisiana Purchase. By his side was Fulton himself, a man of medium height, slender and erect, whose intellectual brow and large, speculative eyes indicated the dreamer and contriver.