Dr. Thomas Cooper
For Sedition
After leaving Oxford, he worked several years as a printer and a pamphleteer, travelling throughout England. He was an outspoken critic of the slave trade and other government policies, and left England for Paris to participate in the French Revolution. He became "obnoxious" to the Government for his liberal sentiments, and his house was attacked in a "Church and King" riot in 1790. Cooper opted to emigrate to the United States in 1794. It is believed his daughter Eliza was born in England.
Settling in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Cooper worked as a lawyer, land commissioner, judge and professor. First teaching Chemistry and Mineralogy at Dickinson College (1811), he eventually accepted a position at the University of Pennsylvania (1816). In 1819, Dr. Cooper accepted a professorship at the University of South Carolina of which he subsequently became President.
Dr. Cooper quickly became involved with early American politics. He put his printing skills to use criticizing government officials and championing the causes of Thomas Jefferson and other states' rights advocates. Cooper's outspokenness ("arbitrary conduct") eventually cost him his appointment as a judge (1811). In fact, eleven years earlier, Dr. Cooper was one of the first individuals to be arrested, convicted, jailed and fined under the notorious Alien and Sedition Laws of the Adams administration. Dr. Cooper's fine was refunded posthumously to his heirs by an Act of Congress.
Scanned copies of Cooper's 'Seditious' newspaper article, arrest warrant, 'Not Guilty' plea, supoenas and sentence documents are online at the National Archives and Records Administration.
A scanned correspondence of over 30 letters with Thomas Jefferson survives in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.
Dr. Cooper, like Jefferson, was an avid correspondent, and copies of his letters can be found in university and institutional archives throughout the world. He published several books on topics of science and law and edited the South Carolina Legal Code.
Cooperville, South Carolina was named in his honor.