Peter Cooper / The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4

Obadiah Cooper, who, with his two brothers, came from England to the colony of New York about 1662, belonged, as we may infer with confidence, to that sturdy class of republican yeomanry which found the restored reign of the Stuarts intolerable. He settled at Fishkill-on-the-Hudson; and his son Obadiah-whom tradition declares to have been the fourth white man child born in what is now Dutchess County-was the great-grandfather of Peter Cooper. In 1720 an Obadiah of the next generation followed, and of his son John, born in 1755, Peter Cooper was the fifth child.

John Cooper came of age in the year of the Declaration of Independence. In the issue between the British government and the American colonies his choice could not be doubtful. He followed the traditions of his family. Indeed, it is now well established and universally admitted that the patriots of the American Revolution were not in fact arrayed against England. They were engaged in a struggle which was but a part of the great conflict waged against shortsighted and obstinate tyranny by Englishmen on both sides of the ocean, and in which the victory for liberty was won on this side sooner than on the other. What the Coopers and their kind achieved here was applauded openly in the mother country by the descendants of a common ancestry as a triumph for the common cause. The use of foreign mercenaries under British commanders in this country was the direct result of the impossibility of inducing Englishmen to enlist for service against their American kinsmen. Hence when John Cooper, of Fishkill, abandoned in 1776 the business he had just established as a hatter, and became sergeant in a company of "minute-men," he was but pursuing the course indicated both by his own convictions and by the history of his fathers and the sympathies of the party in England to which they had belonged. It was Freedom's battle "handed down from sire to son."

He served subsequently for two years in the Continental line, and for the last four years of the war as a lieutenant in the New York militia, actively employed in the perilous service of protecting life, property, and the public stores in the zone of debatable territory,-the "bloody ground" which surrounded the British lines in New York. At the close of the war, New York having been evacuated by the enemy, Lieutenant John Cooper retired to civil life, and resumed business as a hatter in that city,-a worthy example of that American citizen soldiery which has always been equally ready to leave the ways of peace for its country's defense, and to return to them when the exigency had passed.

It was in 1779, during his military service, that John Cooper married Margaret, the daughter of John Campbell, a deputy quartermaster-general in the Continental army, and a trusted agent of Washington. The outbreak of hostilities in 1776 had found John Campbell a prosperous merchant and owner of real estate in New York city. He at once lent to the Revolutionary government eleven hundred guineas,-the whole of his ready money,-entered the service, was made deputy quartermaster-general, and was directed to superintend the hasty evacuation of the city by the Whig inhabitants, and to protect them and their property as far as possible. Lingering too long to assist some of the laggards, he was captured by the forces landed from the British fleet, but was subsequently released; and he made a temporary home at Fishkill while actively engaged in establishing the lines by which the British army, though holding the city and commanding its access to the sea, was practically besieged. General Campbell served throughout the war, and after hostilities had ceased commanded the troops at West Point until they were finally disbanded in 1785.

It is easy to imagine how the young lieutenant and the daughter of the commander who must have been frequently brought into personal relations with him may have met and loved and wedded in the midst of those troublous times, but the romance would have no special bearing on this history. It is enough to say that by this marriage the best blood of England and Scotland-of servants of God and lovers of freedom-was blended in the nine children, seven sons and two daughters, of whom Peter Cooper-born February 12, 1791, in Little Dock (now Water) Street, New York-was the fifth.

John Cooper was not characteristically a seer of visions or a dreamer of dreams. On the contrary, the accounts of him which have come down to us describe him as a stalwart athlete, who "could lift a barrel of cider from the ground and put it in a wagon," and who once, being cornered and attacked by a bull, seized the animal's nose with one hand and so battered its head with a stone that it was glad to turn and fly. Yet he came of a race that believed in Divine guidance; and on one occasion at least he acted upon that belief in a matter then deemed more important, perhaps, than now. The incident can be given best in the words of Peter Cooper himself, who wrote:-

"My father used to tell me how he came to call me Peter. When I was born he became strongly impressed with the idea that I would some day have more than ordinary fame, and what name he should give me was a matter of serious and frequent thought. While walking on Broadway one dark night it seemed as though a voice spoke to him in a clear and distinct manner: 'Call him Peter!' That seeming voice settled my name. My father said that he felt that I was to be of great good in some way; and his remarks, with my mother's, concerning their aspirations and hopes for me acted as a stimulus and made me anxious to fulfill their wishes, and not disappoint them."

If names were to be characteristic of individual careers, it might be better to imitate some Indian tribes, and to give the permanent name only after the career, or at least the character, of its recipient had been indicated by his acts. In this instance the subsequent life of the son did not in any peculiar way imitate that of the Apostle Peter. Evidently not that particular name, but the simple fact that an eminent name, thus suggested and not already familiar in his family, had been given to him, produced upon his mind the effect to which he testifies.

But why should practical John Cooper be disposed to anticipate a special distinction for the infant who was the fifth of his numerous progeny? From the standpoint of the modes of thought of the godly patriots of that generation, and of their ancestors, the English Puritans and the Scotch Covenanters, it is scarcely hazardous to assume that current public affairs largely affected such domestic choices. Peter Cooper's birth was practically simultaneous with the launching of that Ship of State, the "Union, strong and great," in which all patriots had embarked "their hopes, triumphant o'er their fears." To his veteran-soldier father he was the first child of the new era; and the dreams that were dreamed over him were doubtless connected with that glorious future which had just dawned upon the federated republic. The choice of an unfamiliar, non-hereditary name, however suggested, symbolized the break between the old time and the new.

Above all, this incident produced in the son thus christened the profoundest effects, the deepest motives, that can inspire a boyish soul,-the belief in a beneficent mission, the yearning to discover it, the resolve to execute it, and the conviction that it was to be directly connected with the prosperity and progress of the great nation, the life of which began with his own.

The naming of Peter Cooper thus strikes the keynote, or, more accurately, the triple chord, of his life. For he was first of all an American, keenly aware of the opportunities offered by the free institutions of his country to individual ambition, industry, and genius, and of his own personal ability to make use of these opportunities. Secondly, he was a lover of his fellow men, determined to employ for their benefit the means and powers which he felt himself able to accumulate by thought, toil, and frugal economy. Thirdly, he was even in his philanthropy essentially still an American, intent most of all upon the welfare of those classes of his countrymen with whose struggles and needs his own early life had made him familiar. In other words, while his philanthropy covered a world-wide range, his peculiar mission, as he conceived it, was indissolubly blent with the success of the republic of which he was one of the earliest-born sons.

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