Diagram of the British slave ship Brookes, published in 1788. Public domain, British Library.
The Supreme Court said a state could not set railroad rates on a trip that crossed a state line.
A poor household that shipped almost nothing still paid, inside the price of goods, whatever the interstate rate allowed.
A farmer or small shipper who had looked to a state commission for relief found that commission barred from the long haul.
Railroad corporations won a shield against state legislatures just as their lines were becoming national systems.
In the Wabash railway case, decided in 1886, the Court struck down an Illinois rule applied to a shipment that left the state.
Interstate rates, the justices said, belonged to Congress.
The ruling pushed Congress, the next year, to create a federal commerce commission.
Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway Co. v. Illinois, 118 U.S. 557 (1886); Miller, Railroads and the Granger Laws