Thomas Cooper

Thomas Cooper was an English-born scientist, lawyer, and political radical who emigrated to the United States in 1794 after the British government drove him into exile for his support of the French Revolution. He settled in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, where in 1799 he became editor of the Northumberland Gazette and a vocal critic of the Adams administration.

In October 1799 Cooper published a handbill attacking President Adams for misrepresenting his administration's foreign and military policies. He was indicted under the Sedition Act in April 1800 and tried before Justice Samuel Chase, riding circuit in Philadelphia. Chase's conduct of the trial — including direct hostility to Cooper from the bench — would later become one of the principal articles in the U.S. House's 1804 impeachment of Chase. The jury convicted Cooper, and he was sentenced to six months in the Philadelphia jail and a \$400 fine. After his release he continued his political journalism and became a major figure in early American science: he served as professor of chemistry at Dickinson College, then at the University of Pennsylvania, and finally as the second president of South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) from 1820 to 1834. He was a close personal friend and political ally of Thomas Jefferson.