The Story of Cooperstown

by Ralph Birdsall

The actual point at issue in this controversy was soon settled. In a letter to the Freeman's Journal Cooper showed that his father's will, drawn up in 1808, made a particular devise of Three-Mile Point. The words of the document were explicit: "I give and bequeath my place, called Myrtle Grove [Three-Mile Point], on the west side of the Lake Otsego, to all my descendants in common until the year 1850; then to be inherited by the youngest thereof bearing my name."

But the results of the controversy were far-reaching. The quarrel gave rise to Cooper's unfortunate book Home as Found, to new controversies, and to the long series of libel suits.

Home as Found was intended to set forth in the course of a story the principles involved in the dispute about Three-Mile Point. It gave the author an opportunity also to enlarge upon his criticisms of America, and particularly of New York City. For this purpose the story brought upon the scene an American family long resident in Europe whom the writer called the Effinghams. Against the vulgar background of American life the members of this family were intended to personify all the accomplishments of culture and social refinement.

Cooper's own attitude was astonishing in his failure to realize that in the Effinghams he would be supposed to be representing himself and his own family. The intimation was sufficiently obvious. The family returned from residence abroad; the removal to the village of "Templeton," with direct reference to The Pioneers; the story of the Three-Mile Point controversy—the inference seemed to follow from the parallel that the Effinghams were the Coopers. But Cooper's general unwillingness to acknowledge that any of his characters were drawn from life was here carried to the last extreme. It was evident that he was honestly unconscious of any such inference; his purpose was to deal with principles, not persons. When the name of Effingham was derisively applied to him, he resented the imputation.

The controversy between Cooper and his critics had now reached a degree of violence that was grotesque. To stand alone, as Cooper stood, against furious assaults that represented the sentiments of nearly the whole public was not conducive to playful moods of the spirit; yet the controversy had its humorous side, and if the novelist had had a keen sense of humor he would have been spared much trouble. Certain aspects of the ludicrous appealed to Cooper, and there was a range of absurdity within which his merriment was easily excited, as when he laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks because his man-of-all-work thought that boiled oil should be called "biled ile"; but his attempts to create and sustain humorous characters, such as the singing-master in The Last of the Mohicans, justify Balzac's comments on Cooper's "profound and radical impotence for the comic." Nothing could be more comic than his rôle of lecturer to the American people upon refinements of social usage and manners. The many who were guilty of the vulgarities which he wished to correct were precisely those who could not be made to see the impropriety of them, and most fiercely resented any attempt to improve their deportment. If Cooper had possessed an acute sense of humor he would never have written Home as Found, nor would he have dignified with a reply the attack of every scribbler who assailed him. But he took all criticisms seriously, and felt it a solemn duty, in justice to himself and to the principles for which he stood, to defend himself against all and sundry. There is no doubt that in standing alone against the whole world he believed himself to be performing a public service, and displayed a degree of courage which is too rare not to command extraordinary admiration. At the same time those of his friends who described him as borne down by the weight of his sorrow at the misunderstanding and ingratitude which he encountered had not taken the full measure of his character. So splendid a fighter as Fenimore Cooper usually finds some pleasure in fighting, especially if, as in his case, he is habitually victorious. He leaped into the fray of each controversy with such alacrity that it is difficult to avoid the belief that Cooper was animated not only by a sense of justice, but by a joy of battle.

The occasion of the libel suits was the publication in August, 1837, in the Otsego Republican, a Cooperstown newspaper, of an article copied from the Norwich Telegraph, in which Cooper was roundly abused in reference to the Three-Mile Point controversy, and to which the Republican added comments of its own, repeating the disproved statement that the father of the novelist had reserved the Point for the use of the inhabitants of the village. Cooper promptly notified the editor of the Republican, Andrew M. Barber, that unless the statements were retracted he would enter suit for libel. Barber refused to retract; the suit was begun; and in May, 1839, at the final trial, the jury returned a verdict of four hundred dollars for the plaintiff. The editor sought to avoid the payment of the whole award, and a great outcry was raised against Cooper because the sheriff levied upon some money which Barber had laid away and locked up in a trunk. Cooper sued also the Norwich Telegraph, and when other newspapers took the side of their associates he entered suit promptly against any that published libelous statements. In this way one suit led to another, until Cooper was bringing action against the Oneida Whig, published at Utica; the Courier and Enquirer of New York, edited by James Watson Webb; the Evening Signal of New York, edited by Park Benjamin; the Commercial Advertiser of New York, edited by Col. William L. Stone; the Tribune, edited by Horace Greeley; and the Albany Evening Journal, edited by Thurlow Weed. This list includes the leading Whig journals of the time in the State of New York, which were among the most influential in the whole country. Col. Stone, Thurlow Weed, and Watson Webb were former residents of Cooperstown, the two first named having each served an apprenticeship as printer in the office of the Freeman's Journal. Weed was recognized as the leader of the Whig party in the nation, and his newspaper was correspondingly important. He was Cooper's most persistent opponent, and in 1841 the novelist had commenced five suits against him for various articles published in the Evening Journal. It is a curious fact that Weed was noted as a bigoted admirer of his adversary's novels. Weed himself afterward related that when about to leave Albany by stage-coach to attend one of these trials, and inquiring at the booksellers for some late publication to read on the journey, he was informed that the only new book was The Two Admirals, which had just been issued. "I took the book," said Weed, "and soon became so absorbed that I had hardly any time or thought for the trial, through which the author who charmed me was trying to push me to the wall."

The libel suits extended over the period from 1838 to 1844. Cooper acted almost wholly as his own lawyer, and argued his own cases in court. He was pitted against leaders of the bar in the greatest State in the Union. He had become personally unpopular, and was engaged in an unpopular cause. He won his verdicts from reluctant juries, but, in nearly every case, he won. The libel law of the State of New York was made, to a great extent, by the Fenimore Cooper cases.

To complete the story, the final disposition of Three-Mile Point, the innocuous cause of all this controversy, must here be anticipated. In 1899 Simon Uhlman, a wealthy hop merchant, purchased a summer home on the lakeside nearest to Three-Mile Point, and, desiring to acquire this tongue of land for his own use, made inquiries of Samuel M. Shaw, the veteran editor of the Freeman's Journal, to ascertain from whom the purchase might be made. Shaw learned from G. Pomeroy Keese that under the terms of Judge Cooper's will, the Point was then owned by William Cooper of Baltimore, and hastily arranged for the purchase at a moderate price, not for Uhlman, but for the village of Cooperstown. Thus Uhlman lost a desirable water front, and William Cooper a big price for his land, but the citizens of Cooperstown gained a playground, the denial of which to their forebears had nearly caused a riot. Uhlman afterward sold his place, Uncas Lodge, to Adolphus Busch of St. Louis.

Cooper's reputation as an author suffered from his success as a litigant in an unpopular cause, and his prosecution of the libel suits injured the sale of his books, not only then, but for some years after his death. In 1844, just after Cooper had reduced the newspapers of the State to silence, Edward Everett Hale visited Cooperstown, and says that when he tried to buy a copy of The Pioneers at a local bookseller's the dealer coolly declared that he had never heard of the book.[113]

While public attention was engaged by the libel suits, Cooper was occupied with much else. It was during this period that he published his important Naval History, besides ten of his novels. Nor was there any loss of interest in his various avocations, among which, in 1840, he found time to plan and supervise extensive alterations in Christ Church, of which he had become a vestryman in 1835. With his mind full of the Gothic splendor of churches that he had seen in England, he set out to beautify the village church at home. The broad windows with rounded tops he caused to be somewhat narrowed, and pointed, in the fashion usually described as Gothic. Traces of this change still appear in the exterior brickwork of the church, for the outline of the original windows has never been obliterated. To this alteration Cooper added the buttresses all about the church, not for structural necessity, but as an architectural embellishment. The interior he caused to be entirely remodeled, and finished in native oak. Cooper especially prided himself upon an oaken screen which, as his gift to the church, he erected behind the altar. The alterations in the church are referred to in a letter dated "Hall, Cooperstown, April 22nd, 1840" and addressed to Harmanus Bleecker of Albany: