Niles published Marshall's opinion in full,[1236] and in this way it reached, directly or indirectly, every paper, big and little, in the whole country, and was reproduced by most of them. Many journals contained long articles or editorials upon it, most of them highly laudatory. The New York Evening Post of March 8 declared that it would "command the assent of every impartial mind competent to embrace the subject." Thus, for the moment, Marshall was considered the benefactor of the people and the defender of the Nation against the dragon of monopoly. His opinion in Gibbons vs. Ogden changed into applause that disfavor which his opinion in M'Culloch vs. Maryland had evoked. Only the Southern political leaders saw the "danger"; but so general was the satisfaction of the public that they were, for the most part, quiescent as to Marshall's assertion of Nationalism in this particular case.
But few events in our history have had a larger and more substantial effect on the well-being of the American people than this decision, and Marshall's opinion in the announcement of it. New York instantly became a free port for all America. Steamboat navigation of American rivers, relieved from the terror of possible and actual State-created monopolies, increased at an incredible rate; and, because of two decades of restraint and fear, at abnormal speed.[1237]
New England manufacturers were given a new life, since the transportation of anthracite coal—the fuel recently discovered and aggravatingly needed—was made cheap and easy. The owners of factories, the promoters of steamboat traffic, the innumerable builders of river craft on every navigable stream in the country, the farmer who wished to send his products to market, the manufacturer who sought quick and inexpensive transportation of his wares—all acclaimed Marshall's decision because all found in it a means to their own interests.
The possibilities of transportation by steam railways soon became a subject of discussion by enterprising men, and Marshall's opinion gave them tremendous encouragement. It was a guarantee that they might build railroads across State lines and be safe from local interference with interstate traffic. Could the Chief Justice have foreseen the development of the railway as an agency of Nationalism, he would have realized, in part, the permanent and ever-growing importance of his opinion—in part, but not wholly; for the telegraph, the telephone, the oil and gas pipe line were also to be affected for the general good by Marshall's statesmanship as set forth in his outgiving in Gibbons vs. Ogden.
It is not immoderate to say that no other judicial pronouncement in history was so wedded to the inventive genius of man and so interwoven with the economic and social evolution of a nation and a people. After almost a century, Marshall's Nationalist theory of commerce is more potent than ever; and nothing human is more certain than that it will gather new strength as far into the future as forecast can penetrate.
At the time of its delivery, nobody complained of Marshall's opinion except the agents of the steamboat monopoly, the theorists of Localism, and the slave autocracy. All these influences beheld, in Marshall's statesmanship, their inevitable extinction. All correctly understood that the Nationalism expounded by Marshall, if truly carried out, sounded their doom.
Immediately after the decision was published, a suit was brought in the New York Court of Equity, apparently for the purpose of having that tribunal define the extent of the Supreme Court's holding. John R. Livingston secured a coasting license for the Olive Branch, and sent the boat from New York to Albany, touching at Jersey and unloading there two boxes of freight. The North River Steamboat Company, assignee of the Livingston-Fulton monopoly, at once applied for an injunction.[1238] The matter excited intense interest, and Nathan Sanford, who had succeeded Kent as Chancellor, took several weeks to "consider the question."[1239]
He delivered two opinions, the second almost as Nationalist as that of Marshall. "The law of the United States is supreme.... The state law is annihilated, so far as the ground is occupied by the law of the union; and the supreme law prevails, as if the state law had never been made. The supremacy of constitutional laws of the union, and the nullity of state laws inconsistent with such laws of the union, are principles of the constitution of the United States.... So far as the law of the union acts upon the case, the state law is extinguished.... Opposing rights to the same thing, can not co-exist under the constitution of our country."[1240] But Chancellor Sanford held that, over commerce exclusively within the State, the Nation had no control.
Livingston appealed to the Court of Errors, and in February, 1825, the case was heard. The year intervening since Marshall delivered his opinion had witnessed the rise of an irresistible tide of public sentiment in its favor; and this, more influential than all arguments of counsel even upon an "independent judiciary," was reflected in the opinion delivered by John Woodworth, one of the judges of the Supreme Court of that State. He quotes Marshall liberally, and painstakingly analyzes his opinion, which, says Woodworth, is confined to commerce among the States to the exclusion of that wholly within a single State. Over this latter trade Congress has no power, except for "national purposes," and then only where such power is "'expressly given ... or is clearly incidental to some power expressly given.'"[1241]
Chief Justice John Savage adopted the same reasoning as did Justice Woodworth, and examined Marshall's opinion with even greater particularity, but arrived at the same conclusion. Savage adds, however, "a few general remarks," and in these he almost outruns the Nationalism of Marshall. "The constitution ... should be so construed as best to promote the great objects for which it was made"; among them a principal one was "'to form a more perfect union,'" etc.[1242] The regulation of commerce among the States "was one great and leading inducement to the adoption" of the Nation's fundamental law.[1243] "We are the citizens of two distinct, yet connected governments.... The powers given to the general government are to be first satisfied."