Cooper Convicted of Libel
(well, he published in 1799, but was prosecuted and convicted in 1800…)
Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in the summer of 1798 as tension between
Federalists and Republicans peaked. Federalists, led by President John Adams, sought a strong,
orderly central government. Republicans accused Federalists of instituting a tyranny similar to
the one they had struggled against in the American Revolution. The party in power in 1798,
Federalists framed the Alien and Sedition Acts. The most significant of the four, the Sedition
Act, forbade opposition to laws of the federal government and made it illegal to publish criticism
of the government. Because opposition had not yet gained legitimacy in American politics, the
Federalist-controlled presidency and congress pursued Republican dissenters vigorously. At
least fourteen prominent Republican newspaper editors were indicted for publishing criticism of
President Adams’s administration, and ten were convicted.
Thomas Cooper was one of these editors. After emigrating from England in 1794 to find
greater freedom of thought and speech in America, Cooper settled in Pennsylvania and became a
U.S. citizen. He edited the Republican Sunbury and Northumberland Gazette from April 20June 29, 1799, during which time he attacked Federalist policy and specifically the Sedition Act,
accusing Adams of bring the evils of European government to America. His final and most
passionate editorial was reprinted in the Philadelphia Aurora, the leading Republican paper
printed in the nation’s temporary capital. President Adams anonymously published a critique of
Cooper’s article, and invited him to respond. Cooper’s November response incensed Federalists
and with Adams’s support they began proceedings against Cooper. Arrested in April 1800 for
seditious libel, Cooper was sentenced by the arch-Federalist federal judge Samuel Chase to six
months in jail and a $400 fine, after the court found his writings encouraged insurrection against
the government.
Cooper kept up a written tirade against Federalist policies while in jail, and after his
release in October 1800 became a symbol for both Federalists and Republicans in their
acrimonious campaign debates. For Federalists Cooper represented the anarchy that would result
if Republicans won the presidential and congressional elections, while Republicans presented
Cooper as a martyr to Federalist tyranny. No more ready to accept the idea of a loyal opposition
than the Federalists had been, upon coming to power in 1801 Republicans, led by Cooper,
attempted to prosecute several Federalists under the same Sedition Act that had led to Cooper’s
conviction.
Sources/Further Reading:
Reginald Horsman. The New Republic: The United States 1789-1815, pp. 73-77. London:
Longman, 2000.
James Morton Smith. “President John Adams, Thomas Cooper, and Sedition: A Cast Study in
Suppression,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 42, no. 3 (1955): 438-465.