Editing Gibbons v. Ogden (section)

==Case==
Ogden filed a complaint in the Court of Chancery of New York to ask the court to restrain Gibbons from operating on those waters. Ogden's lawyer contended that states often passed laws on issues regarding interstate matters and should have fully-concurrent power with Congress on matters concerning interstate commerce.

Gibbons's lawyer, [[Daniel Webster]], however, argued that Congress had exclusive national power over interstate commerce according to Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, of the [[US Constitution]] and that to argue otherwise would result in confusing and contradictory local regulatory policies. The Court of Chancery of New York and the Court of Errors of New York found in favor of Ogden and issued an injunction to restrict Gibbons from operating his boats.

Gibbons appealed to the Supreme Court and argued, as he had in New York, that the monopoly conflicted with federal law. After several delays, the court began discussing the meaning of the commerce clause in 1824, which had now become an issue of wider interest. Congress was debating a bill to provide a [[General Survey Act|federal survey of roads and canals]].<ref name="FedResp">Todd Shallat, [http://lawlibrary.unm.edu/nrj/32/1/02_shallat_water.pdf Water and Bureaucracy: Origins of the Federal Responsibility for Water Resources, 1787–1838] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140202101555/http://lawlibrary.unm.edu/nrj/32/1/02_shallat_water.pdf |date=2014-02-02 }}, pp 13-15, Natural Resources Journal 32 (Winter 1992)</ref>

Southerners, in particular, were growing more sensitive to what result a holding for exclusive federal jurisdiction over commerce would mean to them as [[sectionalism|sectional]] disputes, especially over slavery, were increasing.<ref name="LrgFedDams"/> Just 18 months prior to oral arguments in the ''Gibbons v. Ogden'' case, the people of [[Charleston, South Carolina]], had been dismayed at the revelation of [[Denmark Vesey]]'s plotted slave revolt. The statehouse quickly followed up the preemptive suppression of the rebellion with the [[Nullification crisis#Negro Seamen Act|Negro Seamen Act]], which required free black sailors on ships coming into the state to be jailed for the duration of the ship's stay in port. The act was promptly struck down as unconstitutional by Associate Justice [[William Johnson (judge)|Johnson]], who was riding federal circuit, on the ground that the act violated commercial treaty provisions with the United Kingdom. South Carolina emphatically rejected Johnson's holding, and talk quickly emerged of nullification and violent disunion. To thread the needle in the ''Gibbons'' case, the Court would need to deliver a holding that both defended national power over interstate commerce but did not eradicate state police powers, which Southern whites viewed as vital to their very survival.