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"Seditious Libel" on Trial, Political Dissent on the Record: An Account of the Trial of Thomas Cooper as Campaign Literature
| Thomas Cooper (1759–1839)1 was one of several individuals the Federalists targeted for indictment and prosecution under the 1798 Sedition Act. An Oxford-educated radical reformer and philosopher, an accomplished lawyer, journalist, and pamphleteer, and later in life a well-known teacher, scientist, judge, and college administrator, Cooper settled at Northumberland, Pennsylvania, in 1794 after emigrating from England in the distinguished company of Dr. Joseph Priestley. For several years he resided quietly in Pennsylvania's backcountry, distanced from regional and national hubs of political discourse, and he shrewdly refrained from partisan entanglements. Beginning in 1799, however, Cooper's associations with two Republican newspapers—the Northumberland Gazette and the Philadelphia Aurora—and the publication of the first edition of his Political Essays signaled his emergence from obscurity. His political reporting and pamphleteering made him a major actor in the 1800 presidential election, earning him powerful allies and enemies among state and national elites. |
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In a short preface to An Account of the Trial of Thomas Cooper (1800), which purported to be a comprehensive textual record of its author's indictment and conviction under the Sedition Act, Thomas Cooper began a sustained rhetorical attack against his political enemies. He explained that, "The Citizens of this Country may learn some useful lessons from this trial; and principally, that if they mean to consult their own peace and quiet, they will hold their tongues, and restrain their pens, on the subject of politics: at least during the continuance of the Sedition Law; a Law, which I do not think 'the powers that be,' will incline to abolish."2 The Account is fascinating not only because it exposed the manner in which a Federalist judiciary enforced the sedition laws against its Republican opponents, but also because it revealed Thomas Cooper's willingness to exploit his own arrest for political gain. In all likelihood, Cooper published the annotated account of his trial not to salvage his own reputation, but rather to imbue his persecution with political significance. He declared in one footnote, "I PRINT THIS TRIAL NOW, not merely to vindicate my own character, but to open the eyes of the public to the tendency of measures countenanced by Mr. Adams, and to the strange doctrines advanced by his adherents, so that the people may be informed against the next election."3 |
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Cooper, anticipating the November 1800 presidential election and well aware that conviction under the Sedition Act was a virtual certainty from the moment charges were filed, seems to have viewed his trial as a political and publishing opportunity; in the Account, he utilized the public forum the courtroom afforded him by drawing out the trial for as long as possible and by attracting intense media scrutiny. The trial unfolded in the midst of a heated presidential campaign, and in the Account there is a sense among the courtroom participants that the political stakes were high. High-ranking Federalists attended the proceedings: Timothy Pickering, President John Adams's secretary of state (he actually sat on the bench with the judges), Congressman Robert Goodloe Harper (who had authored the section of the Sedition Act that Cooper was said to have violated), several senators, and four members of the president's cabinet.4 Federalist and Republican journalists alike sought to turn the resulting spectacle to political advantage, and the judges, prosecutor, and defendant all strove to appear as nonpartisan as possible while accusing their enemies of partisanship. Cooper's strategy ensured an ample supply of material and fueled the intense public interest that would make his stand-alone Account of the trial commercially and politically viable. |
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