New York granted a monopoly on steamboat navigation in its waters; Thomas Gibbons ran a competing federally licensed ferry between New Jersey and New York. Chief Justice Marshall held that 'commerce' includes navigation and reaches every commercial intercourse that concerns more states than one. Because the federal coasting license preempted the state monopoly, Gibbons won. The case launched the Commerce Clause as the constitutional engine of American economic union and set the stage, more than a century later, for Wickard v. Filburn and the modern regulatory state.