James Fenimore Cooper / American Men of Letters

by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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.