My 1838 Boston Almanac notes that on this date in 1836, the Warren Bridge was declared free. This brief entry makes no mention of the protracted legal battle over the bridge that ultimately reached the Supreme Court of the United States, perhaps because almost every Bostonian of the time would have known the story of the Warren Bridge.
In my post yesterday on water and WiFi, I noted that private companies undertook many of the internal improvement projects in late 18th and early 19th century Boston. Bridges were no exception. The legislation authorizing the Charles River Bridge (constructed in 1785) gave the proprietors the right to collect tolls for forty years, after which the ownership of the bridge would pass to the Commonwealth. In 1792 the forty-year term was extended to seventy years.
The bridge, which connected Charlestown and Boston, opened in 1786 and proved wildly successful but insufficient to serve the growing population of Boston as the years went on. John Hales commented on the problem in 1821: “The principal leading streets from these avenues [the Mill Dam, the road to Roxbury, and the West Boston Bridge] are generally of a good width, except that from the Charlestown Bridge, which is irregular and too contracted for carriages, and in fact the whole northern section of the town stands in need of some general system of modernization.” To alleviate some of these traffic problems, the General Court authorized another bridge, the Warren Bridge, in 1828.
The terms of the Warren Bridge charter provided that the bridge would be a toll bridge but also that the bridge would become property of the Commonwealth after a period of no more than six years. The Warren Bridge would enter Boston’s North End approximately 800 feet from the Charles River Bridge—their proximity can be seen in the map above, where one sees the two bridges leaving Boston and converging in Charlestown—and both would originate in Charlestown Square. And thus the problem becomes immediately apparent. If the Warren Bridge were to operate as a free bridge, then the franchise held by the Charles River Bridge proprietors would become worthless.
The proprietors of the Charles River Bridge sought an injunction against the construction of the new bridge, arguing that the legislature had given them an implied exclusive right to operate a toll bridge between Boston and Charlestown via the 1785 charter. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled against the Charles River Bridge proprietors in 1829 and the Warren Bridge was constructed. The effect of the new bridge on the Charles River Bridge were readilty apparent. In 1834, according to John Hayward’s 1846 Gazetteer of Massachusetts, net receipts for the Charles River Bridge were $9,383 while net receipts for the Warren Bridge were $16,427.
By the time the case reached the United States Supreme Court, the Warren Bridge had become free to all. In 1837, the Supreme Court ruled against the plaintiffs, and Chief Justice Roger Taney, writing in his majority opinion ruling, declared: “…the object and end of all government is to promote the happiness and prosperity of the community by which it is established; and it can never be assumed, that the government intended to diminish its power of accomplishing the end for which it was created. And in a country like ours, free, active and enterprising, continually advancing in numbers and wealth, new channels of communication are daily found necessary, both for travel and trade; and are essential to the comfort, convenience, and prosperity of the people. A state ought never to be presumed to surrender this power, because, like the taxing power, the whole community have an interest in preserving it undiminished.”
For a brief technical overview of the legal questions involved, click here.