The Livingston Legacy
Three Centuries of American History
from the Symposium, June 6-7, 1986

Robert R. Livingston:
Enthusiastic Inventor, Prudent Entrepreneur

by Cynthia Owen Philip

It was fashionable in his day for gentlemen to display an interest in the useful arts. Moreover, he fondly entertained the hope that these useful inventions would increase his already substantial fortune and, more important, earn him acclaim as a national benefactor. Despite his aristocratic heritage, he was, like most vigorous men of his day, eager for both fame and emolument.

Unfortunately, Livingston was talented in neither the theory nor the practice of mechanics. His inventions did not work. Still, he possessed the vision and compulsive drive that is common to innovators. He was willing to risk some money and, vital in his case, through his position as chancellor of New York State and his family connection, he had a thorough knowledge of the law and far-reaching political influence. In addition, he was accustomed to using other men as implementors. These endowments when applied to steam navigation--the project that held him literally enthralled from 1798 until his death in 1813--would serve him well.

The notion of propelling a boat by steam was not his own. In fact, the first commercial vessel Livingston designed was not powered by steam, but rather by horses plodding in an endless circle upon the deck. It was his brother-in-law, the equally ardent but more experienced inventor John Stevens, who told him to apply steam. Stevens himself was merely latching on to an age-old challenge that some dated back to the ancient Greeks, while other pointed most modestly to various seventeenth— century experimentors. Nevertheless, when Livingston was first seized with the desire to make it a reality, most scientists as well as the general public derided the dream of freeing boats from the vagaries of the wind and the opposition of tide and current as a fantasy. Recent attempts by British and French mechanics had failed and, although the American rivals James Rumsey and John Fitch each made progress, after Rumsey died of apoplexy on the eve of a crucial demonstration and Fitch was driven to alcoholism when his few supporters deserted him, no one seriously attempted to adapt the steam engine for use in boats.

Livingston’s reaction to Stevens’s advice was immediate and typical. Boasting he could make a steamboat go eight miles an hour, he persuaded the New York State Legislature to grant him a monopoly for the propulsion of vessels by fire or steam on all the waters of the state for the term of twenty years. A reassignment of the exclusive rights given John Fitch in 1787 and humorously referred to as ‘‘ the hot water bill,’’ the act contained the proviso that within a year he must construct a boat capable of traveling between New York City and Albany at an average speed of four miles an hour.

Obtaining the monopoly was the most decisive action Livingston would take to promote his steamboat enterprise. The legal underpinning of his steamboat empire, it gave him control of the already heavily traveled and increasingly lucrative route between New York City and Albany. Neither the jolting stage coach, which took two and a half days, nor the sloops, which when the wind was fitful might take up to a week, would be able to compete with the swift, comfortable, and scheduled service he intended to offer.

That Livingston was not capable of designing a viable steamboat did not matter. With the monopoly as a lure, Stevens and Nicholas Roosevelt, the owner of the best foundry in America, were glad to help him. Their first steamboat went briefly at three to five miles an hour, or so they reported, but the engine was so heavy and vibrated so violently the pipes burst and it had to be abandoned. Their second boat was no more successful. Livingston, however, refused to give up, and to bind Stevens and Roosevelt to him during his absence in France as U.S. minister plenipotentiary, he signed a twenty—year contract with them to continue experiments.

Then, shortly after Livingston arrived in Paris, he met Robert Fulton. The energetic and multifaceted Fulton, he quickly recognized, had far greater mechanical ability than either Stevens or Roosevelt and, equally attractive, the entrepreneurial genius to make steam navigation pay. Although Fulton had initially come to Europe to study portrait painting, for the past ten years he had concentrated his energies on engineering. During that time, he had earned the respect of the international scientific community for his improved methods for raising boats on canals and for his system of submarine warfare.

The previous year he had successfully demonstrated a twenty—foot submarine named the Nautilus that could stay underwater for eight hours with five men aboard. Equipped with bombs called torpedoes, it was capable, he believed, of ending, first maritime, then all war. He had also built a 360-degree panorama, an entertainment that was the rage of novelty-loving Paris and that provided him with a steady source of income.

Fulton had not yet applied himself to steamboating, but he was well acquainted with the myriad problems it presented, and they fascinated him. As it so happened, he was suffering through an unusually fallow period and was eager for a new project. He needed no urging. With characteristic speed, he concluded a series of experiments with a model that he declared proved he could construct a full-scale boat that would go up to sixteen miles an hour and earn a profit of at least $198 a trip between New York and Albany. His object, he wrote Livingston, was “to go quick, carry cheap and thus avoid the competition of boats with sails and carriages.” [1]

Suddenly, Livingston became cautious--perhaps because he sensed Fulton might run away with the project, perhaps because he was afraid another failure would jeopardize his stature as a diplomat, and perhaps because he was worried about his commitment to Stevens and Roosevelt. Whatever the cause, it did not prevent him from signing, after several months of skirmishing, a document that made Fulton his equal partner for the duration of the New York monopoly. Livingston was to put up the seed money. If the boat succeeded, Fulton would be paid “reasonable expenses” for supervision. Fulton took the greater risk, for if the boat failed he would pay half the costs with interest in two years, thus losing his time and labor as well as his share of the initial investment.

The agreement also ensured that neither partner would lose control to outsiders. Each might sell forty of his fifty shares, but the purchasers would get no voice in the conduct of the business. If either partner died, an heir holding twenty shares would be considered an active partner; but should there be two such heirs, the surviving original partner would be given two votes to balance them Since Fulton was then thirty-six years old and still a bachelor, and Livingston was fifty-six years old with two newly married daughters, this clause may have been inserted to satisfy Fulton. It may also have been an expression of Livingston’s valid mistrust of his sons’-in-law business acumen-- both were Livingstons whose lack of entrepreneurial zest he had ample opportunity to observe. The final condition reflected his own fundamental timidity, for it permitted him to withdraw from partnership at any time after he had advanced £500 for experiments.

Nevertheless, the agreement was unusual for its time because it planned for future contingencies, including death. Well before the first corporate enabling legislation had been passed in the United States, it contained elements of a corporation. The contract is an example of Livingston’s vision and practical skill as a lawyer.

That accomplished, Livingston once more drew on his political influence. He asked his brother-in-law, Thomas Tillotson, who was a power in New York State, to obtain another extension of the monopoly fulfillment clause, this time in both his and Fulton’s names. Tillotson could laugh, he wrote, but if their experiments in France should succeed, “it wold be mortifying to have any other competitor for the advantages” on the Hudson. [2] Having done all he was capable of doing, he then put the project in Fulton’s hands and directed his full attention to his prime diplomatic duty, the negotiation of the great Louisiana Purchase.

Within a year, Fulton had built a 74-foot prototype boat and boldly demonstrated it on the Seine at Paris to invited scientists and government officials and to the public at large in a spectacle that was reported in the press as a “succes complet et brillant.” Livingston was not there to share the praise. A few days before the event he had gone with his family to visit the Swiss glaciers. Apparently he had not even told his friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, about his involvement with the steamboat, for shortly afterwards Lafayette wrote him: “I have been very happy to hear of the successful Experiment of our friend Fulton, and its boat which come in so a propos for the Navigation of the Mississippi.” [3]

It seems astonishing, but the only effort Livingston made to advance the project before he left Europe in 1805 was to extract a permit from the British government to export the engine Boulton and Watt had made to Fulton’s specifications and for which, not incidentally, Fulton had paid. Livingston even did not mind that instead of returning to the United States as promised, Fulton spent the next three years in the employ of the English secret service developing his submarine weapons for use against the French.

Fulton arrived in New York in December 1806. Once again Livingston left him to his own devices, preferring to remain at Clermont tending his estate. Fulton did not fail him. Their only serious cause of contention was Fulton’s determination to establish their first steamboat line on the Mississippi River, where, because of rapid westward expansion, he believed far greater profits were to be made than on the Hudson. Livingston, correctly valuing the New York State monopoly, remained adamant for the Hudson. Fulton continued to pester Livingston about the Mississippi, but did as he was bid.

During the spring and summer of 1807, he built a steamboat 146 feet long and twelve feet wide. In mid-August he ran her to Albany and back on a glorious maiden voyage. Within a month, The Steamboat--she was called because there was no other in the world--was offering scheduled service to Albany and back twice a week. Livingston was ecstatic. Assuming more credit than he was entitled to, he wrote his son-in-law that The Steamboat had exceeded Fulton’s calculations and fully justified his own. He did not tell him as well that he still owed Fulton $10,000 for her construction.

By the time ice brought the season to a close at the end of November, riding The Steamboat was the most fashionable mode of traveling to and from Albany. “This makes business and partnership a real pleasure,” Fulton ebulliently wrote Livingston, “particularly when the prospect of emolument is 75 percent upon the capital.” [4]

Despite the dislocations caused by the impending war with England, especially the embargo on trade which dramatically reduced traffic, earnings approached that figure. While Fulton supervised operations and expanded the fleet, building larger and more luxurious boats for the Hudson and then setting up shops in Pittsburgh to build boats for the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, Livingston worked his magic with the New York State legislature. In 1808 an act was passed extending the monopoly five years for each new boat they built, not to exceed thirty years, and providing that any steamboat operating on New York State waters without a license from Livingston and Fulton would be forfeited to them. In 1811 he was able to add sharp teeth to the penalty clause; the amended act allowed them to take possession of an unlicensed boat the moment it began running.

These monopoly acts were crucial, for Fulton’s patent, based not on concrete novelty but rather on having discovered the “unique combinations” of hull proportions, engine power, and paddleboard size that made his steamboats work when all others had failed, was fragile. On every side their enterprise was threatened by competitors eager for a slice of their immense profits.

The first rival was John Stevens who had not complained about Livingston’s callous disregard of their contract, but simply built a boat called the Phoenix and announced he would run her from his private landing in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Albany under a federal coasting license. “Monopolies,” he scolded Livingston and Fulton, “are very justly held, in every free country, as odious. A monopoly gives an unlimited power to one man or set of men to lay heavy contributions on all the rest of the community.” [5] Fulton, who respected Stevens’s ability, advised Livingston to “deal generously” with him. But Livingston, jealous of his exclusive privilege and confident in the state’ s inviolable right to grant monopolies, would not compromise. In fact, he declared, New York State might fill up the mouth of the Hudson, so as to prevent navigation altogether, and although citizens might deplore the folly of the measure, it would be an act of sovereignty to which all must submit. Stevens scorned such arguments as ‘‘ a quixotic tilting at windmills.” [6] Then, fearful of the expense of a lawsuit with an unpredictable outcome and unable to make his boat perform reliably, he partially capitulated.

Stevens was quickly succeeded by a group of Albany speculators who brazenly copied Fulton’s designed and hired men he had trained to build two boats, aptly called the Hope and the Perseverance. Unfazed by the monopoly and its penalties for infringement, they ran them on the same schedule as the Fulton and Livingston boats. Livingston wasted no time in applying for an injunction in both federal and state courts. The circuit court judge--Livingston’s cousin Henry Brockholst Livingston--dismissed their petition on the grounds that an injunction at this early stage was too drastic a remedy. Citing the importance, complexity, and “delicacy” of the case, the state court postponed its decision by asking the Albany Company to show cause why an injunction should not be issued.

Livingston spent much of that winter in Albany, rounding up support for their cause. “We are head over heels in the law, what the issue will be I know not,” he wearily complained to his brother Edward. “We cannot expect justice from our enemies and our friends are fearful of granting it, lest they appear to love us.” [7] Nevertheless, he prevailed. Chief Justice James Kent declared in his meticulous opinion that to prohibit states from conferring monopolies would be a “monstrous heresy,” for it would annihilate their legislative powers.

With Stevens at least quiescent and the Albany Company quashed, their profits for years to come seemed secure. Fulton estimated that the annual receipts from the Hudson River line would exceed $120,000. Even the declaration of war in 1812 did not halt his boat building. At that time five boats, including a ferry to New Jersey, were running under his patent on the Hudson. One was already plying the Mississippi. Additional boats for the Hudson and Mississippi, the Potomac, the James, the Ohio, and Long Island Sound were in the process of construction. To help control subscribers, Livingston’s relatives were given special concessions with Fulton’s warm concurrence. In fact, he was himself now a part of the family for, in 1808, he had married Livingston’s young cousin, Harriet Livingston.

All might have continued smoothly if it had not been for Livingston’s poor health. In the summer of 1812 he suffered what must have been a series of strokes. Tied to him emotionally as well as economically, Fulton refused to admit his increasing incapacity. When Livingston died in February 1813, Fulton was psychologically devastated. Although the burden of their rapidly expanding steamboat empire had fallen on his shoulders, he was dependent on Livingston not only for his legal expertise, but because they had for so long pursued a common vision together.

Fortunately, the terms of their partnership stood Fulton in good stead throughout the complex and often abrasive relationship that developed with Livingston’s heirs. Livingston had made no provision for his share of the partnership in his will so that his widow and two sons-in-law had been obliged to divide it into three equal parts, giving none of them the twenty shares necessary to be a voting partner. Even when the death of Mrs. Livingston the following year gave the sons-in-law each one vote, Fulton did not lose control for, as provided in his agreement with Livingston, he had two votes to balance theirs. This was vital because, although these Livingstons were avid for profits, they had neither the inclination nor the ability to make any positive contribution to the enterprise. They were so busy squabbling with each other and with Fulton--to complicate matters one was his brother-in-law--that they did not even help him defend the monopoly from increasingly determined challengers.

In February 1815, Fulton, too, died. He caught pneumonia on the way back from New Jersey where he had narrowly beaten back yet another legal attack on the exclusive privileges. His heirs were no more able or conscientious than Livingston’s. Their chief objective was to milk the enterprise. None understood the desire to participate in America’s growth that had motivated Livingston and Fulton. None grasped the practical problems involved in so grand a venture as establishing a nationwide steam empire.

Robert R. Livingston is most often remembered as a landed aristocrat and statesman. This would have pleased him. But it should not be forgotten that, through his alliance with Robert Fulton and his skill in making the law work for him, he was also a forerunner of the nineteenth century transportation barons. Although he facetiously called it his “hobby horse,” his passion for invention led him to play a major role in the great nineteenth-century technological revolution.

Notes