1837-1842.
By the end of 1837 Cooper had pretty sedulously improved every
opportunity of making himself unpopular. His criticisms had been
distributed with admirable impartiality. Few persons or places could
complain that they had been overlooked. The natural satisfaction that
any one would have felt in contemplating the punishment inflicted upon
his friend or neighbor, was utterly marred by the consideration of the
outrage done to himself. There was scarcely a class of Cooper's
fellow-citizens whose susceptibilities had not been touched, or whose
wrath had not been kindled by something he had said either in public or
in private, and by his saying it repeatedly. The sons of the Puritans he
had exasperated by styling them the grand inquisitors of private life,
and by asserting that a low sort of tyranny over domestic affairs was
the direct result of their religious polity. He had roused the
resentment of the survivors of the old Federalist party by declaring
that its design during the war of 1812 had been disunion, and that in
secret many of them still longed for a restoration of monarchy, and
sighed for ribbons, stars, and garters. He had not conciliated the party
with which he was nominally allied by his incessant attacks upon the
doctrine of free-trade. He had made Boston shudder to its remotest
suburbs, by stating again and again in the strongest terms that (p. 172)
it was in the Middle States alone that the English language was spoken
with purity. The New England capital he had further described as a
gossiping country town with a tone of criticism so narrow and vulgar as
scarcely to hide the parochial sort of venom which engendered it. He had
charged upon New Yorkers that their lives were spent in the constant
struggle for inordinate and grasping gain; that to talk of dollars was
to them a source of endless enjoyment; and that their society had for
its characteristic distinction the fussy pretension and swagger that
usually mark the presence of lucky speculators in stocks. He had
attributed to the whole trading class a jealous and ferocious
watchfulness of the pocket, and a readiness to sacrifice at any time the
honor of the country for the sake of personal profit. To the native
merchants he had denied the name of real merchants. They were simply
factors, mere agents, who were ennobled by commerce, but who did not
themselves ennoble it. The foreign traders resident here fared no
better. They had never read the Constitution of the country they had
made their home, and were incapable of understanding it if they should
read it. Always judging of American facts in accordance with the
antiquated notions in which they had been brought up, they were largely
responsible for the erroneous opinions entertained and blundering
prophecies made in Europe in regard to the condition and future of the
United States. The educated class, above all, he had denounced for its
indomitable selfishness and its hatred of the rights of those socially
inferior. It was entirely behind the fortunes of the country and still
cherished prejudices against democracy that the very stupidest of
European conservatives had begun to lay aside. The newspaper (p. 173)
press he had assailed with a pungency and vigor which it in vain sought
to rival. He was spattered by it, however, with almost every opprobrious
term that belongs to the vocabulary of wrath and abuse. Invention was
tasked to furnish discreditable reasons for all that he said and did.
That inexhaustible capacity of devising base motives for conduct, which
is an especial attribute of mean minds, had now opportunity to put forth
its full powers in the way of insinuation and assertion. It did not go
unimproved. A common charge brought against him after the publication of
the "Letter to His Countrymen" was that it had been written for the sake
of gaining office. It was even said that Van Buren had a hand in it.
Then and afterward, the Whig newspapers represented Cooper as seeking
the position of Secretary of the Navy. Denial availed him nothing. It
would certainly have not been at all to his discredit to have desired
the place; for he knew a great deal about the navy, and its interests
were very dear to his heart. For these very reasons his appointment to
it would have been in violation of the traditional policy of the
government. It was probably never once contemplated by any
administration, as it was certainly never asked by Cooper himself.
The two extracts that have already been given are doubtless sufficient
to satisfy any curiosity that may exist in regard to the way in which he
was spoken of by the press of America. Yet coarse as was its
vituperation, it was surpassed by that of Great Britain. Englishmen may
have felt, and have felt justly, that Cooper took an unfair view of
their social life and political institutions. National character sweeps
through a range so vast that a man will usually be able to find in it
what he goes to seek. Even under the most favorable conditions (p. 174)
the tastes of a coterie or the habits of a class are made the standard
by which to estimate the tastes and habits of a whole people. Certain it
is that the view of any nation is to be distrusted which is not taken
from a station of good-will. But granting that Cooper was unjust in his
observations, there was nothing he said which afforded the least excuse
for the coarse personality with which he was followed from the time he
published his volumes on England. The remarks of the ordinary journals
can be dismissed without comment. But brutal vituperation was found in
abundance in periodicals which claimed to be the representatives of the
highest cultivation and refinement. According to "Blackwood's Magazine,"
Cooper was a vulgar man, who from having been bred to the sea had been
enabled to give some striking descriptions of sea-affairs, and in
consequence had unluckily imagined himself a universal genius. It went
on to add, that on the strength of the trifling reputation he had
acquired by stories descriptive of American life, he had come to Europe,
and had since been partly traveling on the Continent to pick up
materials for novels, and partly residing in England, actively employed
in the effort to introduce himself into society. In this it admitted he
might have been partially successful, for the English were a very
yielding people and did not take much trouble to resist attempts of this
kind. "Blackwood," however, was outdone in this rowdy style of reviewing
by "Fraser's Magazine." From that periodical we learn that Cooper was "a
passable scribbler of passable novels," a "bilious braggart," a "liar,"
a "full jackass," "a man of consummate and inbred vulgarity," "a bore of
the first magnitude in society," who went about fishing for (p. 175)
introductions. "But this," it concluded, speaking of his England, "was
his last kick, and we shall not disturb his dying moments." Two years
later the magazine seemed to think he had some power of kicking left,
for it returned to the charge in consequence of his review of Lockhart's
"Life of Scott." In this article he was called a "spiteful miscreant,"
an "insect," a "grub," a "reptile." The "Quarterly Review" was as
virulent and violent as the magazines, but the attack was more skillful
as well as longer and more elaborate. By garbling extracts it cleverly
insinuated a good deal more than it said, and it so contrived to put
several things that the reader could hardly fail to draw inferences
which the writer must have known to be false. Even these attacks were
equaled if not surpassed at a later period by the "London Times." A
nominal review in that journal of "Eve Effingham," as "Home as Found"
was entitled in England, was really devoted to personal vituperation of
the novelist. It ended with the assertion that he was more vulgar than
ever, and was the most "affected, offensive, envious, and
ill-conditioned" of authors. Altogether Cooper must have been impressed
with the effectiveness of the blow which he had struck by the violence
with which it was resented. It seems hard to believe that remarks such
as have been quoted should have been thought to establish anything but
the vulgarity of the men who wrote them. Yet they apparently answered
their purpose. The very latest notice of Cooper's life which has
appeared in Great Britain, characterizes his work on England as an
"outburst of vanity and ill-temper." It certainly contained some
ill-judged remarks which have been made the most of by his enemies; but
this estimate, like many other assertions in the same sketch, was (p. 176)
not got from reading the work itself, but from what British periodicals
had said about it.
Such was the kind of criticism that the novelist now mainly received in
the two great English-speaking countries. These flowers of invective do
not constitute an anthology which an Englishman or American of today can
read with pleasure, or contemplate with pride. It was the comments made
by his countrymen that naturally touched Cooper most nearly. His nature
was of a kind to feel keenly, and resent warmly insinuations and charges
that impugned the purity of his motives. Nor was his a disposition to
rest quiet under attack or to assume merely the defensive. He retorted
in letters, in works of fiction, and in books of travel. Finally he
resorted to libel suits. Never, indeed, was a fiercer fight carried on
by an individual against a power more mighty than Cooper carried on with
the press. It had a thousand tongues, he had but one; but it often
seemed as if his one had the force of a thousand. The epithets he
applied to newspapers were not of the kind with which they were in the
habit of celebrating themselves. Their enterprise in obtaining news he
described as a mercenary diligence in the collection and diffusion of
information, whether true or false. Nor were his comments upon those
concerned in carrying them on more favorable. What we should call a
reporter he, on one occasion, mildly spoke of as a "miscreant who
pandered for the press." In the last novel he wrote, he energetically
termed this whole class the funguses of letters who flourished on the
dunghill of the common mind; and that in their view the sole use for
which the universe was created was to furnish paragraphs for
newspapers. Men in the higher grades of the profession fared (p. 177)
little better. Against the political journals, in particular, he brought
the charge that under the pretence of serving the public they were
mainly used to aid the ambition or gratify the spite of their editors.
Even as early as 1832, Cooper had awakened the indignation of the press
by an incidental remark made in the introduction to "The Heidenmauer."
He was describing a journey through a part of Belgium in which the Dutch
troops had been operating the week before his arrival. They had been
reported as having committed unusual excesses. Of these excesses he said
he could find no trace. He went on to add a sentence which has
apparently only a slight connection with what had gone before. "Each
hour, as life advances," he wrote, "am I made to see how capricious and
vulgar is the immortality conferred by a newspaper." This remark was
warmly resented. It was asserted to be a declaration, not merely of
indifference to the opinion of the press, but of a preference on his
part of its censure to its praise. Its business, therefore, was to see
that his wishes should be carried out.
After the controversy in regard to the Three Mile Point, the attacks of
the Whig journals increased in bitterness. The state of mind it caused
in Cooper can be seen in a little volume, published by him in April,
1838, entitled "The American Democrat." This work is made up of a
singular mixture of abstract discussions on liberty and equality, on the
nature of parties, on forms of government, and of remarks on national
habits and manners. It is not an interesting hook. Yet it is fair to say
of it, that it is animated throughout by a lofty patriotism, and it
manifests a clear view of the dangers and duties of a democracy, (p. 178)
with its comparative advantages and disadvantages. But it likewise
exhibited some of the most uncompromising traits of the author's
character. In writing it, he was not aiming at popularity; it might not
be much out of the way to say that he was aiming at unpopularity. The
doctrine with which he sets out is, that in this country power rests
with the people, and power ought always to be chidden rather than
commended. He was accordingly liberal in criticism. But the value of
what he said was largely impaired, if not wholly destroyed by the
one-sidedness of view and tendency to over-statement into which his
ardor of feeling now habitually hurried him. In nothing is this
extravagance more strikingly seen than in the comments in this work upon
the press. There was a great deal of truth in what he said; but the
justice of some of his views was deprived of any effect by the
exaggeration and consequent injustice of others. The substance of his
remarks was that there were more newspapers in this country than in
Europe, but they were generally of a lower character. The multiplication
of them was due to the fact that little capital was required in their
creation, and little intelligence employed in their management. Their
number was, therefore, not a thing to be boasted of but rather to be
sorrowed over, since the quality diminished in an inverse ratio to the
quantity. Nor was there anything in the methods employed by the press
that justified any exultation in its prosperity. It tyrannized over
public men, over letters, over the stage, over even private life. Under
the pretence of preserving public morals, it corrupted them to the core.
Under the semblance of maintaining liberty, it was gradually
establishing a despotism as rude, as grasping, and as vulgar as (p. 179)
that of any state known. It loudly professed freedom of opinion, but
exhibited no tolerance. It paraded patriotism, but never sacrificed
interest. But its great fundamental failing was the untrustworthiness of
its statements. It existed to pervert truth. Its conductors were mainly
political adventurers. They were unscrupulous, but they were not so
utterly ignorant that they failed to see the necessity of occasionally
making correct assertions. It was, however, this mixture of fact with
fiction that was the chief cause of the evil influence exerted. The
result of it all was that the entire nation, in a moral sense, breathed
an atmosphere of falsehood. He concluded his indictment by declaring
that the American press would seem to have been expressly devised by the
great agent of mischief, to depress and destroy all that was good, and
to elevate and advance all that was evil.
This style of remark was certainly not designed to win newspaper favor
or support. But he went even farther in his novels of "Homeward Bound"
and "Home as Found." In those two works he drew the portrait of an
American editor in the person of Steadfast Dodge of the Active Inquirer.
All the baser qualities of human nature were united in this ideal
representative of the press. He was a sneak, a spy, a coward, a
demagogue, a parasite, a lickspittle, a fawner upon all from whom he
hoped help, a slanderer of all who did not care to endure his society.
Such a picture did not rise even to the dignity of caricature. Nor is it
relieved either in this work or elsewhere by others drawn favorably. The
reader of Cooper will search his writings in vain for a portrait which
any member of the editorial profession would be glad to recognize as his
own.
All this was vigorous enough, but it could hardly be called (p. 180)
profitable. Cooper had now cultivated to perfection the art of saying
injudicious things as well as the art of saying things injudiciously.
His ability in hitting upon the very line of remark that would still
further enrage the hostile, and irritate the indifferent and even the
friendly, assumed almost the nature of genius. The power of his attacks
could not be gainsaid. But while they inspired his opponents with
respect, they filled his friends with dismay. He was soon in a singular
position. He enjoyed at one and the same time the double distinction of
being reviled in England for his aggressive republicanism, and of being
denounced in America for aping the airs of the English aristocracy. It
hardly seemed a favorable time for beginning hostilities in a new field.
Yet it was then that he entered upon his famous legal war with the Whig
newspapers of the state of New York.
A detailed account of the libel suits instituted by Cooper would form
one of the most striking chapters in the history of the American press;
and for some reasons it is to be regretted that the plan he had of
writing a full account of them was never carried out. Here only a slight
summary can be given. It is well to say at the outset that many
assertions ordinarily made about them are utterly false. For certain of
these prevalent misconceptions Greeley is responsible. He spoke of these
trials with some fullness in commenting upon libel suits in his
"Recollections of a Busy Life." But Greeley's life was too busy for him
always to recollect accurately. While he had not the slightest intention
to say anything untrue, what he said was in some instances of this
character; though more often it was misleading rather than false. (p. 181)
But outside of what Greeley has written, there are several erroneous
assertions current. One of the most common of these is the statement
that Cooper's success in them was mainly due to the application of the
law maxim, that the greater the truth the greater the libel. There was
never any ground for even an insinuation of this kind. Cooper, when his
attention was called to it, treated it with contempt. "The pretense," he
wrote in 1845, "that our courts have ever overruled that the truth is
not a complete defense in a libel suit in the civil action, can only
gain credit with the supremely ignorant." In criminal indictments the
New York statute of 1805 had expressly declared that the truth might be
pleaded in evidence by the defense. The Constitution of 1821 made this
provision part of the fundamental law, and it was adopted from that into
the Constitution of 1846. The assertion owed its origin wholly to the
effort of beaten parties to explain their defeat on some other ground
than that they had been found guilty of the offense with which they had
been charged.
A more preposterous statement even than this was that the question
involved in these suits was the right of editors to criticise the
productions of authors. In not one of these trials was the literary
judgment passed by the reviewer mentioned as having the slightest
bearing on the case. It ought not to be necessary to say that it was the
attack upon the character of the man that alone came under the
consideration of the courts, and not that upon the character of the
book. The impudent pretense was, however, set up at the time that the
press had a right to go behind the writer's work, and assail him
himself. "Does an author," said "The New Yorker" in February, (p. 182)
1837, "subject himself to personal criticism by submitting a work to the
public? If he makes his work the channel of disparagement upon masses of
men, he does."
The most marked feature of these trials is that Cooper fought his battle
single-handed. With a very few exceptions,--notably the "Albany Argus"
and the "New York Evening Post,"--the press of the party with which he
was nominally allied, remained neutral. Some of them were even hostile;
for the novelist's criticism of editors had known no distinction of
politics. On the other hand, the press of the opposition party was
united. From East to West they bore down upon Cooper with a common cry.
No event in his life showed more plainly the fearless and uncompromising
nature of the man; nor again did anything else he was concerned in mark
more clearly his versatility and vigor. In these trials he was assisted
by his nephew, Richard Cooper, who was his regular counsel. But outside
of him, in the civil suits, he had very rarely any help, and in most of
them he argued his own cause. Wherever he appeared in person he seems to
have come off uniformly victorious. Nor were his victories won over
inferior opponents. The reputation of the lawyer is under ordinary
conditions limited necessarily to a small circle. Even in that,
considering the amount of intellectual acuteness and power displayed, it
is an exceedingly transitory reputation. But the men against whom Cooper
was pitted stood in the very front rank of their profession. They were
leaders of the bar in the greatest state in the Union. Nor have times so
far swept by that their names are not still remembered; and stories are
still told of their achievements by those who have taken their (p. 183)
places. Cooper, not a lawyer by profession, met these men on their own
ground and defeated them. It was not long, indeed, after these suits
were instituted, that it was claimed by his friends, and often conceded
by his foes, that he was the one man in the country best acquainted with
the law of libel. Our surprise at his success is increased by the fact
that he was not only unpopular himself, but he was engaged in an
unpopular cause. The verdicts he won were usually small in amount, but
they were wrung from reluctant juries, and frequently in the face of
bitter prejudices that had to be overcome before he could hope for a
fair consideration of his own side.
At the outset the editorial fraternity were disposed to take these libel
suits jocularly. They were looked upon as a gigantic joke. Nor did this
feeling die out when the first trial resulted in Cooper's favor. It was
proposed that the newspapers throughout the country should contribute
each one dollar to a fund to be called "The Effingham Libel Fund," out
of which all damages awarded the novelist were to be paid. Every
additional suit was welcomed with a shout. As time went on this
insolence gave way to apprehension. In nearly every case the plaintiff
was coming off successful. The comments of the press began to assume an
expostulatory tone. Cooper was gravely informed that were he to be tried
in the High Court of Public Opinion--this imaginary tribunal was usually
made imposing by dignifying its initial letters--for his libels upon his
country and his countrymen, the damages he would have to pay would not
only sweep away the amounts given him by the results in the regular
courts, but even the profits that had accrued from the sale of his
novels. These remonstrances were often animated also by a (p. 184)
new-born zeal for his literary fame. He was told he was his own greatest
enemy. He was doing himself irreparable injury by the course he was
taking. He was so acting as to lose the reputation he had early won.
This feeling naturally increased in intensity as suits continued to be
decided in his favor. The newspapers at last rose to the full
appreciation of the situation. The liberty of the press was actually in
danger. The trials were said to be conducted in defiance of law as well
as justice. The judges belonged to the Democratic party, and they
wrested the statutes from their true intent in order to oppress the Whig
editor. There came finally to be something exquisitely absurd in the
utterances of the journals on the subject of these suits. One would
fancy from reading them that the plaintiff was a monster resembling the
bloodthirsty ogre of a fairy tale, bullying judges, overawing juries,
maliciously bent on crushing the free-born American who should have the
temerity to express an unfavorable opinion of his writings. Coriolanus,
indeed, never fluttered the dove-cotes in Corioli more effectively than
for some years Cooper did the Whig newspaper offices of the state of New
York.
The origin of the suits was as follows: An account of the circumstances
connected with the Three Mile Point controversy appeared, immediately
after they had taken place, in the "Norwich Telegraph," a paper
published in the neighboring county of Chenango. The article began with
a reference to Cooper. "This gentleman," it said, "not satisfied with
having drawn upon his head universal contempt from abroad, has done the
same thing at Cooperstown where he resides." In this spirit it (p. 185)
went on to give its report of the events told in the preceding chapter.
"So stands the matter at present," it closed its account, "Mr. J. F. C.
threatening the citizens on the one hand, and being derided and despised
by them on the other." In conclusion it called upon the "Otsego
Republican," the Whig newspaper of Cooperstown, to furnish all the facts
in the case.
The latter journal was edited by a man named Barber. He was not slow to
comply with the request, and in one of the numbers of August, 1837, he
republished the article of the "Chenango Telegraph" with additional
assertions of his own. The latter belonged more to the realm of fiction
than of fact. Three Mile Point he declared had been reserved expressly
for the use of the inhabitants of Cooperstown by the father of the
novelist. When the notice was published depriving them of their rights,
a meeting had been called which had been largely attended. The room was
crowded with the industry, intelligence, and respectability of the
village. Powerful addresses were made and a series of resolutions were
passed. These expressed the feelings of all present. "The remarks," the
newspaper continued, "were of a lucid character, and the resolutions,
full, pungent, and yet respectful."
Two days after this article had appeared, the editor received a letter
from Cooper's counsel which was to the effect that he would be
prosecuted for libel unless he retracted his statements. On his side the
novelist undertook to make perfectly clear to him that his assertions
were untrue; but he expected, after the real facts had been set before
him and fully examined, that he would take back what he had said. "No
atonement," the letter concluded, "will be accepted, that is not first
approved of by the plaintiff in the suit." Barber was not (p. 186)
disposed either to retract or to investigate the accuracy of the facts
he had stated. He published the letter, however, with the usual solemn
declaration that seems to be kept in type in all newspaper offices, that
in doing what he had done he had been actuated solely by the noblest
motives; that he had not published anything libellous; that if in
anything he had been misinformed, he held himself always ready to make
the proper correction. "In conclusion," he said, "not being sensible of
having injured Mr. Cooper, we consider that we have no atonement to
offer." Under these circumstances the suit went on. It did not come to
final trial until May, 1839, at the Montgomery circuit of the Supreme
Court. Joshua A. Spencer was the principal lawyer for the defense, while
Cooper conducted his own case. The jury returned a verdict of four
hundred dollars for the plaintiff. Eventually the editor sought to evade
in various ways the payment of the whole award, and did succeed in
evading the payment of a good part of it. A terrible outcry was,
however, raised against Cooper because the sheriff levied upon some
money that had been carefully laid away and locked up by Barber in a
trunk.
With this begins the famous series of suits that occupied no small share
of the few following years of the author's life. At the time the first
one was decided, another was pending against the editor of the "Chenango
Telegraph." The leading Whig newspapers naturally took the side of their
associates. For a time they had a good deal to say about the greatest
slanderer of the whole profession pouncing upon one of the fraternity
least able to defend himself, simply because in a moment of haste and
excitement he had been guilty of what they were pleased to call (p. 187)
a technical libel. It did not seem to occur to them, that any one
could be so foolhardy as to make them the object of attack. They did not
have to wait long to discover that the influence wielded by a journal
was no protection. Besides the newspapers already mentioned, Cooper
prosecuted the "Oneida Whig," published at Utica. This suit was tried in
April, 1842. Though successful in it, the damages awarded were slight,
being but seventy dollars. A suit, tried little more than six months
before against the "Evening Signal," of New York city, edited by Park
Benjamin, had resulted in the recovery of a larger sum. The amount in
this case was three hundred and seventy-five dollars. With these
exceptions his suits were directed against the "Courier and Enquirer,"
edited by James Watson Webb; "the Albany Evening Journal," edited by
Thurlow Weed; the "Tribune," edited by Horace Greeley, and the
"Commercial Advertiser," edited by William Leet Stone. These were the
leading Whig journals in the state, and among the most influential in
the whole country. It could not be said that Cooper hesitated about
flying at high game.
In the controversy with Webb, Cooper had the least success. This was
partly due to the fact that it was not a civil action that was brought
against the former, but a criminal indictment. Juries might make editors
pay for the privilege of expressing their feelings of contempt or hate,
but they were not inclined to send them to prison. The indictment in
this case was based upon a criticism of "Home as Found." The review,
which was of several columns in length, had appeared in the "Courier and
Enquirer" of November 22, 1838. There was very little in the way of
hostile insinuation and assertion and personal depreciation that (p. 188)
could not be found in this article and in some which followed. The
attack was moreover a skillful one. It was directed largely against
those points where Cooper had fairly laid himself open to ridicule.
Especially was this the case in the matter of descent and family. Webb
represented the novelist as the son of a humble hawker of fish through
the streets of Burlington, who had afterward become a respectable though
not a first-class wheelwright. By probity, industry, and enterprise he
had finally risen to wealth and position. The maternal grandmother of
the author had, according to this same story, for more than twenty years
occupied a stall and sold fresh vegetables in the Philadelphia market,
and was remarkable for the superior quality of the articles she kept.
Webb praised the father at the expense of the son. The former had never
been ashamed of his humble origin. On the contrary, he was justly proud
of the intelligence and ability which, unaided by any mere external
advantages, had raised him to a station in life so much higher than he
at first held. Of such a career any child had a right to be proud. These
were statements that could not well be resented, conceding that they
were injurious, nor could they well be corrected, conceding that they
were untrue. Webb, who had recently returned from Europe, asserted,
moreover, that he had been present at a dinner-party in London, where
"Home as Found" came under discussion. On that occasion he had fallen
into a conversation about it with "a nobleman of distinction." The
latter informed him that Cooper's attack upon English society had
materially injured the sale of his works in that country, and it was
evident that he was now seeking to regain the ground and the (p. 189)
market he had lost, by praising everything English at the expense of
everything American; but as his base motives were now fully understood,
no one was led astray. The reported conversation carries internal
evidence of its authenticity. It required a very noble lord to impute to
a well-known writer motives so very noble; and none but an Englishman
could have appreciated so fully the eternal conditions of success in the
English market. These remarks of Webb's are, however, merely incidental.
His direct personal attack on Cooper rivaled that of the British
periodicals in ferocity. "We may and do know him," said he in the only
extract for which there is room, "as a base-minded caitiff who has
traduced his country for filthy lucre and low-born spleen; but time only
can render harmless abroad the envenomed barb of the slanderer who is in
fact a traitor to national pride and national character."
For this article Webb was indicted by the grand jury of Otsego County,
in February, 1839. In June of the same year a second indictment was
found against him for saying that the first was secured by political
trickery. The trial, for various reasons, did not come off until
November, 1841. Webb made a public retraction of the statements upon
which the second indictment was found; and this was accepted on the part
of the prosecution. On the trial for the first indictment the jury
disagreed. The defendant objected to Cooper's summing up the case, and
this objection the court sustained. It was a wise policy: for the trials
in the civil suits showed that the novelist was full as effective in
addressing a jury orally as he ever was in addressing the public in his
most successful stories. One amusing feature of this case was that the
two volumes of "Home as Found" were read to the jury from (p. 190)
beginning to end by the plaintiffs counsel, Ambrose L. Jordan.
Cooper was not discouraged by the ill result of this trial. The
indictment was still pressed. A second trial took place at Cooperstown
in June, 1843. Again the jury disagreed. A third trial is reported to
have taken place and to have resulted in the acquittal of Webb; but I
find no account of it in the newspapers to which I have had access.
The suits brought against the "Albany Evening Journal" were, however,
the most striking in this whole contest. They show, too, more clearly
than the others, the spirit and methods with which it was waged on both
sides. Some features are especially marked. One is the illustration
furnished of the onslaughts that were made upon the novelist's character
and reputation, not from any real ill-will, but from pure wantonness or
at least very slight political hostility. Another is the jaunty
superciliousness with which the conductors of the press at first
affected to treat the threats of prosecution. More noteworthy than
anything else, however, is the view given of the deliberate manner in
which Cooper began these suits, and the relentless tenacity with which
he followed them up. The "Evening Journal," of which Thurlow Weed was
then the head, partly from the political skill of its editor, and partly
from its being the organ of the party at the state capital, was, at that
time, the most influential Whig journal in New York. Weed published in
it, in two different numbers of August, 1837, the articles which had
appeared in the "Chenango Telegraph" and the "Otsego Republican" about
the Three Mile Point controversy. He accompanied them with some comments
of his own in regard to Cooper. "He was, as is known," said he in (p. 191)
his second notice, "pretty generally despised abroad. He is now
equally distinguished at home." The editor then went on to speak of the
act of meanness, as he termed it, which had excited the contempt of the
novelist's neighbors; and that the more precise account now furnished by
the "Otsego Republican" would rather increase than diminish the measure
of scorn that had been aroused. Much was Weed's surprise when, on the
18th of April, 1840, he received a letter from Cooper's counsel
requiring a retraction of what had been said in 1837, and a further
statement that it must be made within a certain time or a suit for libel
would be begun. He treated this notice cavalierly. He was amused by it
even more than he was astonished. As it had taken three years for Cooper
to bring the suit, he concluded that he would take three weeks at any
rate to reply to the demand for a retraction. A second letter from
Cooper's counsel, dated the 4th of May, met with the same neglect.
Accordingly on the 25th of that month he had the pleasure of announcing
that he had been sued for libel by "Mr. John Effingham."
The case after being put off once on a very frivolous pretext, came to
trial at the Montgomery circuit of the Supreme Court, held at Fonda, in
November, 1841. When it was called Weed was not present, nor was counsel
for him. Cooper consented to have the case go over for a day. It was
then called again. Nothing was seen of the defendant, nothing had been
heard from him. The case was accordingly sent to the jury with a speech
from the plaintiff's counsel. A verdict of four hundred dollars was
returned. Weed arrived at Fonda the evening of that day, and wrote
anonymously to the "New York Tribune" an account of what had taken (p. 192)
place. In some of its details it was more entertaining than accurate.
The reason he gave for his absence from the trial was that he had been
kept at home by severe illness in his family. But the result enabled him
to notice in this manner the sum awarded by the jury.
"This meagre verdict under the circumstances is a severe and mortifying
rebuke to Cooper, who had everything his own way.
"The value of Mr. Cooper's character, therefore, has been judicially
determined.
"It is worth exactly four hundred dollars."
For the publication of this letter a suit was immediately begun against
the "Tribune." But though he wrote for that journal an amusing account
of the trial, in his own paper Weed gave vent to the anger which the
result had excited. The verdicts gained in his various cases by "this
man Cooper," he said, had made "deep inroads upon a fame once bright and
enviable, but now sadly dim and dilapidated." He then recited in full
the misdeeds of the novelist. "For all this," concluded the aggrieved
editor, "connected with the attempt to deprive the citizens of a social
privilege with which they were invested by his honored father, we said
Mr. Cooper was despised. And for this he prosecuted us. And now having
again said it he may again prosecute us, if he wants and thinks he can
obtain four hundred dollars more."
Weed did not appreciate the fact that he was not dealing with a
politician, but with a man indifferent to or rather contemptuous of
popular clamor. His challenge was immediately accepted. Early in
December, 1841, he was able to announce the fact that he had been (p. 193)
sued again. "The sheriff," he said, "has served another writ upon
us for an alleged libel upon Cooper. It remains to be seen how much
longer courts and juries will sanction this legal persecution of a man,
who after libeling his country and calumniating his countrymen, seeks to
muzzle a free press." The jocular tone used at first had all vanished.
Instead it was replaced by a fierce spirit of wrathfulness and defiance.
During the whole of December, 1841, Weed kept constantly republishing
extracts from other newspapers reflecting upon and attacking Cooper's
character and conduct. These were, he said, "sharp rebukes" of the
novelist's "ridiculous and unworthy attempt to disgrace his own country
to gain the favor and smiles of the nobility abroad." Some of these
newspaper comments furnish very amusing reading now, especially as the
impunity of most of the writers was due to their insignificance. "We
rejoice," said one of them, "to witness the spirit of independence
manifested by the conductors of the press. It proves their incorruptible
integrity and their love of principle, their firm hostility to foreign
notions, and their detestation of the man who seeks to ape the high and
aristocratic manners of English nobility." These valorous declarations
came mainly from the country papers of the state of New York, for the
"Evening Journal" was the Triton of these minnows. Weed, however,
eagerly reproduced everything that came from outside. One article, in
particular, from a Chicago paper, was published, in order that Cooper
might see "what right-minded and unprejudiced people say and think of
him far away in the boundless West."
The appeal was to deaf ears. Neither contracted East nor boundless (p. 194)
West affected Cooper's resolution. As fast as the articles were
republished, they were carefully examined, and prosecutions begun
against the "Evening Journal" for those of them containing libelous
matter. By the middle of December five suits had been commenced, and
more were under consideration. A little later, if contemporary newspaper
reports can be trusted, the number had swelled to seven. The editor
began to appreciate the difficulty and danger of the situation. His
courage, however, did not falter. In fact he looked upon himself as
manfully standing in the gap for freedom of speech. "These suits," he
said "will determine whether an Independent Press is to be protected in
the free exercise of honest opinion, or whether it is to be overawed and
silenced by the persecutions of an inflated, litigious, soured novelist,
who, in his better days by the favor of the Press, made the money with
which he now seeks to oppress its conductors, and sap its independence."
He did not purpose to flinch from his duty. Accordingly he announced
that he should continue publishing these attacks until Cooper ceased
prosecuting.
In this determination he was encouraged by the result of two suits tried
in April, 1842, in the Otsego County Court. Though he was beaten in
both, the verdict was for small amounts. In one case it was fifty-five
dollars, in the other eighty-seven dollars. This convinced the press
that the tide was turning. Again the country newspapers were filled with
libelous paragraphs. Again the novelist was denounced for his heartless
abuse of his country, and his soulless and contemptible vanity. Again
these strictures were carefully collected from every quarter, no matter
how insignificant, and republished in the columns of the "Evening (p. 195)
Journal." But these cheerful anticipations were speedily dissipated.
Another suit, tried at Fonda in the Supreme Court in May, 1842, resulted
in a verdict of three hundred and twenty-five dollars for the plaintiff.
The country papers were indignant. One of the editors sagely suggested
that "if judge and jury are to carry on this war on the press to gratify
individual malignity much further, it would be well for all editors to
unite in petitioning the legislature to pass a law that judges should
discharge their duties impartially, and juries be composed of honest and
intelligent men." This profound suggestion marks pretty plainly the
intellectual grade to which most of the writers of these paragraphs had
attained. Before it could be acted upon another suit had been decided.
In the September term of the Supreme Court held at Cooperstown, a
further verdict of two hundred dollars was awarded. In the following
month a new suit was begun.
Weed had fought his fight manfully. But the business of publishing
libelous paragraphs at these rates, low as they were, was ceasing to be
either pleasant or profitable. Besides his own counsel fees, the adverse
verdicts carried with them heavy costs. He concluded to let the liberty
of the press take care of itself. Accordingly, on the 14th of December,
1842, he published, though with a grumbling comment, a retraction of all
his previous statements. It had been previously submitted to the eminent
lawyer, Daniel Cady, and by him approved. It withdrew, first, the
allegations contained the previous year in a specific article in the
paper. "On a review of the matter and a better knowledge of the facts,"
were the words of the retraction, "I feel it to be my duty to withdraw
the injurious imputations it contains on the character of Mr. (p. 196)
Cooper. It is my wish that this retraction should be as broad as the
charges. The 'Albany Evening Journal' having also contained various
other articles reflecting on Mr. Cooper's character, I feel it due to
that gentleman to withdraw every charge that injuriously affects his
character."
The course of instruction had been protracted and expensive, but the
lesson had been learned at last. The independence of the press had been
crushed by the domineering despot of Cooperstown. The controversy
threatened to break out again in 1845, but it seems never to have got
beyond words. There is a comic element introduced into the whole affair
by the fact that the editor of the "Journal" was a profound and even
bigoted admirer of his adversary's novels. So fond was he of quoting
from them, that according to Greeley, jokers at that time gravely
affirmed that Weed had never read but three authors,--Shakespeare,
Scott, and Cooper. In the very heat of the controversy he was said to
have sat up all night reading "The Pathfinder," which had come out a
little while before. Greeley also asserts that the paragraphs which
appeared in the "Evening Journal" were merely designed as gentle
reminders to the novelist of the folly of the course he was pursuing.
This might find belief in a society in which telling a man that he was
an object of universal contempt would be deemed an expression of
friendly interest in his welfare. When he says, in addition, that there
was no shred, no spice of malice in these assaults, he takes away the
sole ground on which a plea of palliation can be brought. If not due to
that they had not even the poor excuse of weak human nature. They were
the wanton acts of a man who attacks another, not from (p. 197)
indignation or wrath, but from the mere desire of inflicting annoyance
or pain.
The controversy with the "Commercial Advertiser" belongs not here but to
the account of the "Naval History." It has already been said that the
"Tribune" had been sued for the publication of Thurlow Weed's letter
describing the trial at Fonda in November, 1841. In December, 1842, this
case came off at Ballston. Greeley assumed the conduct of the defense.
He was unsuccessful. The jury brought in against him a verdict of two
hundred dollars and costs. "We went back to dinner," he wrote, "took the
verdict in all meekness, took a sleigh and struck a bee-line for New
York." No sooner had he reached the city than he published a most
entertaining account of the whole trial. It filled eleven columns of the
"Tribune," and the demand for it became so great that it was found
necessary to publish it in pamphlet form. For some expressions in it
Cooper began another suit. In this instance Greeley gave up the plan of
defending himself and intrusted the conduct of his side to Seward. The
case dragged on for years in the New York courts, and, so far as I have
been able to discover, had not been brought to a final trial before the
plaintiff's death.
By the end of 1843, Cooper had pretty well reduced the press to silence,
so far as comments on his character were concerned. It was
insignificance or remoteness alone that protected the libeler. The
leading newspapers of the state, however much they might abuse his
writings, learned to be very cautious of what they said of him
personally. But it was a barren victory he had won. He had lost far more
than he had gained. That such would be the result, he knew, while (p. 198)
he was engaged in the controversy. It affected, at the time, his literary
reputation, and, as a result, the sale of his writings; and since his
death it has been a principal agency in keeping alive a distorted and
fictitious view of his personal character. A common impression came to
be of him something like the description which Greeley's lawyers gave of
the estimation in which he was held in Otsego County, in some legal
papers bearing the date of July, 1845. This was to the effect that he
had acquired and had among his neighbors "the reputation of a proud,
captious, censorious, arbitrary, dogmatical, malicious, illiberal,
revengeful, and litigious man." This one-sided and hostile view of a
strongly-marked character had just enough of truth in it to cause it to
be widely received as an accurate and complete picture. In a similar way
the notion became current that he sought to ape the manners of the
English aristocracy. Whatever Cooper's foibles were, they were none of
them imported. He was too proud in feeling and too self-centred in
opinion ever to think of aping anything or anybody. But on these points
the prejudices and misrepresentations of that day have lasted down to
this.
The account given makes it clear that the occasion of bringing the first
of these libel suits was accidental. But as time went on the prosecution
of them assumed to Cooper the shape of a duty. When once it had taken on
that character, no possible degree of unpopularity or odium could have
prevented him from persisting in his course. He treated with disdain the
common arguments used to persuade him to abandon them. To one of these
he referred directly in a novel published in 1844. He was insisting upon
the superiority of the past to the present, a sentiment which (p. 199)
became a favorite burden of his latter-day utterances. "The public sense
of right," he said, "had not become blunted by familiarity with abuses,
and the miserable and craven apology was never heard for not enforcing
the laws that nobody cared for what the newspapers say." He certainly
had some justification for the hardest things he thought and said of the
press. The newspapers which circulated the false reports about his
father's disposition of the property at Three Mile Point never corrected
them after the precise facts had been published. Many of them continued
to repeat the original statements after they must have known them to be
untrue. Nor did they stop here. As the British press had in his case
done all it could to justify the charge Cooper made against it of
ferocious blackguardism of personal and political foes, so many of the
American editors seemed anxious to realize, so far as it lay in their
power, the picture that had been drawn of them in the character of
Steadfast Dodge. Papers containing offensive paragraphs about Cooper
were carefully sent, not directed to him personally, but to his wife and
daughters. The fear of punishment is the only motive by which those who
commit acts of this kind can possibly be influenced. On the other hand,
it is an idle claim that the character of the press has been elevated by
libel suits that Cooper or any one else has ever brought. Such
prosecutions may be both justifiable and necessary; but the agencies
that form and build up intelligence and taste and high principle are not
of this negative and restraining character.