Thomas Cooper, 1759-1840.

English-born American jurist, scientist and educator. 

Thomas Cooper was born in London, England,  into a wealthy landowning and manufacturing family from Lancashire.  Raised in Manchester at the early dawn of the industrial revolution. Thomas Cooper was educated at University College, Oxford, but left in 1779 without taking a degree, on account of his heterodox religious views.   Around 1781, Cooper made the acquaintance of  Joseph Priestley, who would serve as his lifelong intellectual mentor. Cooper subsequently delved into law at the Inns of Court and was called to the bar in 1787. He proceeded to the northern circuit, practicing as a barrister in Lancashire, while also spending time studying medicine.  Cooper eventually settled back in Manchester and became a partner in a calico printing company.  Cooper learned chemistry in order to experiment with new bleaching techniques.

Sympathetic to radical causes, Thomas Cooper was enthused by the French Revolution and joined a variety of political societies, coming into contact with Paine and other radicals.  Cooper traveled to France in 1792, accompanied by James Watt (inventor of the steam engine), on a mission from the Manchester corresponding societies.  After their return to England, Cooper and Watt were labeled radicals by Edmund Burke, inducing Cooper to reply with a defiant pamphlet.  Cooper's radical activities brought him to the attention of suspicious British authorities. Shortly after the outbreak of the French revolutionary war in 1793, feeling political dissenters like himself were in danger and disappointed by the bloody turn of events inside France, Cooper decided to emigrate to America in late 1793. 

Cooper settled in Northumberland, Pennsylvania in early 1794, where he was soon joined by his friend, Joseph Priestley later that year. Cooper became an American citizen in 1795 and carved out a name for himself as a lawyer in Pennsylvania. Cooper quickly delved into American political affairs, writing numerous articles in the Northumberland Gazette.  Cooper aligned himself with the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican party and was particularly vocal in his opposition to the federalist Adams administration. Cooper was arrested in 1800, and imprisoned for six months under the Alien & Sedition Acts. When the Jeffersonians came to power in late 1800, Cooper was rewarded with state positions.  Cooper was made a district judge in 1806.  During his years as a judge, disenchanted by democratic politics, Cooper's political ideas shifted, and he re-aligned himself closer to the federalists, angering his old republican comrades.  Faring poorly in his judicial duties, Cooper was drummed out of office by 1811, at the request of the Pennsylvania legislature.  In the interim, Priestley had died and Cooper inherited his laboratory and set about writing memoirs of Priestley's work, reviving his own interest in chemistry.

After his dismissal from the bench, Thomas Cooper entered upon an academic career, facilitated by his new federalist friends. Cooper served as a professor of chemistry at Carlisle (now Dickinson) College in 1811, and then at the University of Pennsylvania in 1815.  By this time, Cooper's economic views had also dramatically shifted, and he briefly became an advocate of the protectionist cause, popular in Pennsylvania, which he had earlier denounced.  This was also among his more active publishing periods. Cooper edited numerous works, including the Emporium, a compilation of recent scientific discoveries. Convinced of the links between medicine and chemistry, Cooper tried to secure a simultaneous appointment in the faculty of medicine at Penn in 1818 (it failed). 

Despite the protean shifts in his political and economic stances, Thomas Cooper retained the friendship and admiration of Thomas Jefferson,  who considered Cooper "the greatest mind in America".  In 1817, Cooper was handpicked by Thomas Jefferson to become the first professor of chemistry, natural science and law - indeed the very first professor nominated - at the newly-founded University of Virginia.  But delays in opening of the university and the opposition of the local Presbyterian clergy over Cooper's religious views made the position at Virginia untenable before he even taught his first class. 

Cooper saved Jefferson from an embarrassing quandary by resigning from Virginia to take up an appointment  at South Carolina College (future University of South Carolina) in Charleston, SC in late 1819.  Thomas Cooper's appointment was initially to teach chemistry.  The death of South Carolina president Jonathan Maxcy in the summer of 1820 led to the appointment of Cooper (then in his sixties, the oldest professor on the faculty) as president pro tempore.  Despite rumblings by conservative clerics, Thomas Cooper was made permanent President of South Carolina College in December 1821.

As was customary at the time, college presidents had the duty to teach the final year "philosophy" course, a generic course that ranged over politics, law, ethics, etc. to finish off the classical education of undergraduates. Before Cooper's arrival, South Carolina had partitioned the final year duties between the President Maxcy (who taught metaphysics) and Robert Henry, a dedicated professor of moral philosophy.  Cooper was expected to take over the metaphysics course, but petitioned the South Carolina trustees to transfer metaphysics to Henry, and allow him to teach a course in political economy instead. As a result, Thomas Cooper is often credited as being the first person to teach a dedicated course on economics at an American college.

Thomas Cooper's economics course at  South Carolina was launched in early 1825. Cooper's course relayed conventional British Classical economics of Smith and Ricardo.  Cooper initially relied on Marcet's Conversations for his text before switching over to McVickar's reprint of McCulloch.  But Cooper soon wrote his own book of Lectures (1826) which he would use as a textbook through the remainder of his tenure at South Carolina.  Although well-received, Cooper's textbook was not widely adopted - partly because of its heavier-than-usual economic content, partly because of its unrelenting defense of laissez-faire and free trade. Cooper had shifted economic stance once again (e.g. 1823) and now became a favorite target of the the protectionist American System economists, like Matthew Carey.  Cooper's lessons filtered into the South Carolina elites, and his ideas were made use of in the political quarrels of the day - notably over tariff policy.  During the nullification crisis of 1829, Cooper came out openly for secession.  Betraying his earlier radical abolitionist roots, Cooper reconciled himself to slavery, and even owned slaves himself.  

Despite his compatibility and even adulation by the South Carolina political elites, ultimately, it was Cooper's heterodox religious views (most scandalously his 1829 Fabrications of the Pentateuch) which sank him.  Conservative clerics stepped up their pressure for his dismissal. They made use of his political remarks on nullification to charge him as unsuitable, and force an investigation by the Board of Trustees of South Carolina College in 1831.  Although Cooper was acquitted, he was exhausted and declining enrollments led to questions about his leadership of the institution.  In November 1833, Cooper resigned the presidency, and resumed his position as merely professor of chemistry.  Moral philosopher Robert Henry took over the college presidency and the political economy courses, but it did not last for long.  The enrollment situation had reached such a critical level, that the Board of Trustees fired the entire faculty  (Cooper included) in December 1834, and set about reconstructing South Carolina College anew.  Francis Lieber would inherit the mantle of Cooper as professor of history and political economy at South Carolina in late 1835, using Cooper's lectures as his base.  

In his retirement, Thomas Cooper was induced by the Governor of South Carolina to help compile the state's laws, producing the first five volumes of the Statutes at Large of South Carolina, which began to appear in 1836.

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