[4] Aware of the potential of the new steamboat navigation, competitors challenged Livingston and Fulton by arguing that the commerce power of the federal government was exclusive and superseded state laws.

Former New Jersey Governor Aaron Ogden had tried to defy the monopoly but ultimately purchased a license from a Livingston and Fulton assignee in 1815 and entered business with Thomas Gibbons from Georgia.

The partnership collapsed three years later, however, when Gibbons operated another steamboat on Ogden's route between Elizabeth-town, New Jersey (now Elizabeth), and New York City, which had been licensed by the US Congress under a 1793 law regulating the coasting trade.

[6] Southerners, in particular, were growing more sensitive to what result a holding for exclusive federal jurisdiction over commerce would mean to them as sectional disputes, especially over slavery, were increasing.

[4] 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 Court interpreted "among" to mean "intermingled with:" If, as has always been understood, the sovereignty of Congress, though limited to specified objects, is plenary as to those objects, the power over commerce with foreign nations and among the several States is vested in Congress as absolutely as it would be in a single government, having in its Constitution the same restrictions on the exercise of the power as are found in the Constitution of the United States.The part of the ruling that stated that any license granted under the Federal Coasting Act of 1793 takes precedence over any similar license granted by a state is also in the spirit of the Supremacy Clause although the Court did not specifically cite that clause.

This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations, other than are prescribed in the Constitution.The word "among" means intermingled with.