Cooper's Contemporaries
Thomas Cooper was one of the most if not the most influential pro-slavery academics of the Antebellum United States. To evaluate his importance in the debates on slavery, it is important to look at contemporaries. Because of his intellectual and academic focuses in his writing, he will be compared with only fellow academics. This will exclude politicians including James Henry Hammond and John Calhoun as well preachers. Focusing solely on intellectuals will narrow the conversation between pro-slavery supporters, characterize the academic's role in the debates on the peculiar institution, and assist in evaluating lasting importance. |
Academic Contemporaries
Cooper's fellow pro-slavery academics and intellectuals
Thomas Dew. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Thomas
|
Nathaniel Beverly Tucker. Courtesy of William and Mary Law School Scholarship Repository.
Nathaniel Beverly TuckerProfessor at College of William and Mary
Important Work: The Partisan Leader
Nathaniel Beverly Tucker lead other pro-slavery academics in the pursuit to defend slavery through arguing it was a necessary component to the stability of the South's economy. [2]
An Address by James Philemon Holcombe. Courtesy of Amazon UK.
James Philemon HolcombeProfessor at University of Virginia
Important Work: Is Slavery Consistent With Natural Law
James Philemon Holcombe was one of the most important pro-slavery scholars because his works were concise and often public addresses, which made him a more popular and well-known academic. He also assisted in tying the pro-slavery argument to the need for a Confederate state. [5]
|
George Frederick Holmes. Courtesy of the University of Virginia Library.
George Frederick HolmesProfessor at University of Virginia, later an independent scholar
Important Works: Articles in The Southern Quarterly Review
Despite leaving his professorial role behind, George Frederick Holmes was an important scholar to the pro-slavery argument both during his time as a professor and as an independent scholar. [3]
Samuel A. Cartwright. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Samuel A. CartwrightVirginian Physician
While Samuel Cartwright was not a professor, he was a scientist and intellectual who wrote about the afflictions and diseases of African Americans. Relying on “Samuel George Morton, the most eminent craniologist of the day,” Cartwright used his understanding of science to attempt to explain why African Americans ran from slavery, a "disease" he termed Drapetomania. [6]
|
Additional Pro-Slavery Academics: William A. Smith of Randolph Macon College (Brophy 72-74); Albert Taylor Bledsoe of University of Virginia (Brophy 62-66); R. H. Rivers of Alabama Wesleyan College (Brophy 85); Thomas R. R. Cobb of Lumpkin Law School (Jenkins 114); Francis Henney Smith of Virginia Military College (Brophy); George Armstrong of Washington College (Brophy); D. H. Hill of Washington College and Davidson College before becoming a Confederate general (Brophy 57); George Robertson of Transylvania University who changed from anti-slavery to proslavery thought (Brophy 58-59); Lewis Green, president of Transylvania University (Brophy 60); Thomas Thornton, president of Centenary College and professor at College of Jackson, later Madison College (Brophy 77-78); August Baldwin Longstreet of Emory College, president of Centenary, chancellor of University of Mississippi, and president of South Carolina College (Brophy 79-80); Ebenezer Newton Elliott of Mississippi Planters’ College and editor of Cotton is King (Brophy 80-81); James Henley Thornwell, president of South Carolina College (Brophy 84); John L. Dogg, president of Mercer University (Brophy 86-87); Frederick A. P. Barnard, president of Columbia University after teaching at University of Alabama and University of Mississippi (Brophy 146-150); Robert L. Dabney of Union Theological Seminary (Jenkins 116); and James L. Cabell of University of Virginia (Jenkins 263).
Cooper's Impact
Views of Cooper Scholars
In an essay about Thomas Cooper and secession, Dumas Malone stated that Cooper was “the schoolmaster of state rights and the prophet of secession." [1] The strength of the term "schoolmaster" reveals that, in Malone's analysis, Cooper was a master of the topic of states' rights and instructs his readers of these rights, while "prophet" highlights the idea that Cooper predicted the secession that occurred almost a quarter century after his death.
According to Kilbride, Cooper’s ties to the materialistic views that were born in the latter part of the Enlightenment distinguished his support for the peculiar institution from fellow pro-slavery advocates. Cooper worked his arguments to simultaneously support the economics of slavery and to explain it as a moral institution. In his texts, he also asserted that slavery was modern and even "progressive." Common arguments against slavery claimed it was a backwards institution that was not modernizing. Cooper fought particularly with this idea, arguing that slavery was contemporary, sometimes more so than the North. Kilbride insisted that Cooper's ideas were new not because they had never been heard before but because Cooper tweaked and revised others' arguments before refashioning them to fit his ideas. [2]
According to Kilbride, Cooper’s ties to the materialistic views that were born in the latter part of the Enlightenment distinguished his support for the peculiar institution from fellow pro-slavery advocates. Cooper worked his arguments to simultaneously support the economics of slavery and to explain it as a moral institution. In his texts, he also asserted that slavery was modern and even "progressive." Common arguments against slavery claimed it was a backwards institution that was not modernizing. Cooper fought particularly with this idea, arguing that slavery was contemporary, sometimes more so than the North. Kilbride insisted that Cooper's ideas were new not because they had never been heard before but because Cooper tweaked and revised others' arguments before refashioning them to fit his ideas. [2]
Views of Pro-Slavery Scholars
While none of the other scholars focus solely on Cooper, they imply his importance as one of the most significant pro-slavery intellectuals.
Alfred Brophy claims that “Michael Sugrue [a historian] makes a compelling case that South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) was the single most important school for pro-slavery politicians and thinkers." [3] Brophy's evaluation of Sugrue's claims are helpful to understanding Cooper's importance because Cooper, according to Brophy, was one of the two most prominent figures emerging from South Carolina College. Brophy explains that the college was important because it was the first to ardently support slavery. Because Cooper was a leading scholar at South Carolina College, he helped to lead the school's charge in supporting slavery. Even as Brophy focuses on Dew and other contemporaries, he admits to the deep influence Cooper and his college inflicted upon his fellow academics and their respective schools. William Sumner Jenkins presents Malone's argument that Cooper influenced both his contemporary academics such as Dew, lawyers like Harper, and politicians such as Hammond. However, he disagreed with this point, claiming that Cooper's ideas were not new. However, Jenkins, multiple pages later, calls Cooper an “eminent intellectual." [4] |
Other scholarship focuses on other intellectuals such as Thomas Dew but still mentions Cooper's importance to those figures. In explaining Dew, Kenneth Stampp concludes that Cooper most likely influenced Dew's paper. [5]Eugene Genovese reveals that pro-slavery academics were all looking at the same pieces of evidence when drafting their own ideas. His evidence proves that pro-slavery academics were relying on each other and tweaking each others' arguments. [6] Because Cooper is mentioned almost no where else in this essay, his inclusion here among the other leading southern pro-slavery writers reveals that he is an important figure in that his role needs to be understood in order to fully grasp the others'.
Cooper's Significance
Thomas Cooper was one of the most if not the most prolific pro-slavery academics of his time. While scholarship on Cooper himself is fairly lacking, the broader research on pro-slavery academics reveals Cooper's importance. Not only did Cooper argue preexisting ideas in a new light but, in doing so, he added to ideas that his fellow academics would use in their own arguments, therefore helping to continue pro-slavery academic thought.
Sources for Bios
[1] Alfred L. Brophy. University, Court, and Slave: Pro-Slavery Thought in Southern Colleges and Courts and the Coming of the Civil War. Oxford University Press (2016): 35, 40.
[2] Alfred L. Brophy. University, Court, and Slave: Pro-Slavery Thought in Southern Colleges and Courts and the Coming of the Civil War. 50.
[3] Brophy 67.
[4] Brophy 55.
[5] Brophy 67, xix-xx.
[6] William SumnerJenkins. Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South. University of North Carolina Press (1960): 249; Dr. Cartwright. "Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race." PBS. [WEB]
[2] Alfred L. Brophy. University, Court, and Slave: Pro-Slavery Thought in Southern Colleges and Courts and the Coming of the Civil War. 50.
[3] Brophy 67.
[4] Brophy 55.
[5] Brophy 67, xix-xx.
[6] William SumnerJenkins. Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South. University of North Carolina Press (1960): 249; Dr. Cartwright. "Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race." PBS. [WEB]
Sources
[1] Dumas Malone. “Thomas Cooper and the State Rights Movement in South Carolina, 1823-1830.” The North Carolina Historical Review 3, no. 2 (1926): 184. [JSTOR]
[2] Daniel Kilbride. “Slavery and Utilitarianism: Thomas Cooper and the Mind of the Old South.” The Journal of Southern History 59, no. 3 (1993): 475-476. [JSTOR]
[3] Alfred L. Brophy. University, Court, and Slave: Pro-Slavery Thought in Southern Colleges and Courts and the Coming of the Civil War. Oxford University Press (2016): 84.
[4] William SumnerJenkins. Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South. University of North Carolina Press (1960): 111.
[5] Kenneth M. Stampp. "An Analysis of T. R. Dew's Review of the Debates in the Virginia Legislature." The Journal of Negro History 27, no. 4 (1942): 382. [JSTOR]
[6] Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese “Slavery, Economic Development and the Law: The Dilemma of the Southern Political Economists, 1800-1860.” Washington and Lee Law Review 41, no. 1 (1984): 23-24. [WLU]
[2] Daniel Kilbride. “Slavery and Utilitarianism: Thomas Cooper and the Mind of the Old South.” The Journal of Southern History 59, no. 3 (1993): 475-476. [JSTOR]
[3] Alfred L. Brophy. University, Court, and Slave: Pro-Slavery Thought in Southern Colleges and Courts and the Coming of the Civil War. Oxford University Press (2016): 84.
[4] William SumnerJenkins. Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South. University of North Carolina Press (1960): 111.
[5] Kenneth M. Stampp. "An Analysis of T. R. Dew's Review of the Debates in the Virginia Legislature." The Journal of Negro History 27, no. 4 (1942): 382. [JSTOR]
[6] Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese “Slavery, Economic Development and the Law: The Dilemma of the Southern Political Economists, 1800-1860.” Washington and Lee Law Review 41, no. 1 (1984): 23-24. [WLU]