Thomas Gibbons was a lawyer, politician and steamboat operator. He was plaintiff in the famous case of Gibbons vs. Ogden, which ended the New York monopoly on steamboat traffic.
Background
Thomas Gibbons was the sixth of the eight children of Joseph and Hannah (Martin) Gibbons, and was born on December 15, 1757, just outside Savannah, Georgia, where his father had settled about two years earlier, having come originally from New Providence in the Bahamas.
Education
Thomas Gibbons was educated at home and in Charleston, South Carolina, where he read law.
Career
Thomas was accused of betraying the Americans at Charleston in 1780 but Gen. Lincoln cleared him of this charge. After the peace, he soon became one of the outstanding lawyers of Georgia, making, it is said, $15, 000 a year from his practise in addition to the income from his plantation.
In 1791, he was a campaign manager for Anthony Wayne, who defeated James Jackson for reelcation from the First Georgia District. Gibbons had been too active, there were “more votes than voters, ” and Jackson contested the returns.
In his speech at the congressional hearing on March 13, 1792, he spared Wayne who was apparently innocent, but attacked “this person, Gibbons, whose soul is faction, and whose life has been a scene of political corruption”.
Wayne was unseated and Gibbons challenged Jackson to a duel in which several shots were exchanged without damage to either party. Neither this episode, however, nor his Tory record, prevented “Lawyer Gibbons” from serving as mayor of Savannah in the years 1791-92, 1794-95, and 1801.
He then became federal judge for the Georgia district. About 1810, he purchased as a summer residence an estate in Elizabethtown, New Jersey.
In 1817, he acquired a little steam ferry, the Stoudinger, and in 1818, the Bellona, of which Cornelius Vanderbilt was captain. Gibbons ran them first from Elizabethtown Point up the Raritan to New Brunswick, connecting with the steamers of Aaron Ogden, sometime senator and governor of New Jersey, who operated a ferry line from Elizabethtown Point to New York City.
The New York legislature in 1803, with renewals in 1807, 1808, and 1811, had granted to Robert R. Livingston and Robert Fulton the exclusive right of steam navigation in state waters. They had assigned the rights between New York and New Brunswick to John R. Livingston.
Ogden, backed by the New Jersey legislature, had unsuccessfully opposed the New York monopoly, and in 1815 had purchased from the latter, Livingston, the right to operate a ferry between Elizabethtown Point and New York.
In 1818, Gibbons broke with Ogden and boldly started to run his own ferries from Elizabethtown to New York, competing with Ogden’s Atalanta.
Ogden thereupon secured an injunction on Oct 21, 1818, from Chancellor James Kent of New York. Gibbons appealed, arguing that his federal coasting license was enough to permit the running of the ferry, but the injunction was upheld by Kent on October 6, 1819, and by the state court of errors on April 27, 1820.
Thereupon Gibbons vs. Ogden was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States which refused to accept jurisdiction in 1821 but finally heard the case in the February term of 1824.
Gibbons, thoroughly aroused, spared no expense; he secured the legal services of Daniel Webster and Attorney-General William Wirt, and made a provision of $40, 000 in his will to carry on the case if he should die before it was settled.
The case gave Chief Justice Marshall the opportunity for one of his most famous decisions. Gibbons won the verdict, and the New York monopoly, with all others of its kind, was declared null and void.
In thus throwing open American waterways this opinion of Marshall’s, according to his biographer, A. J. Beveridge, did “more to knit the American people into an indivisible nation than any other one force in our history excepting only war”.
The cost of litigation ruined Ogden, but he had had one morsel of satisfaction while it was in progress. At the time they first quarreled, Gibbons had gone to Ogden’s home and by insulting him tried to force a challenge from him.
Instead of giving him satisfaction in a duel, Ogden sued the irascible Georgian for trespass and won a verdict of $5, 000. Belligerent to the end, Gibbons left a will stipulating in strong terms that his son-in-law, whom he did not like, should never get a cent of his property.
During the Revolution Thomas Gibbons was a Loyalist, while his father and brother were patriots. Thus the Gibbons property was saved during both the British occupation and the anti-Tory reaction.
Connections
In 1780, Gibbons was married to Ann Miles Heyward.