He then forbade the further use of his grounds by the
public. Many of the newspapers throughout the state misrepresented his
action, and he foolishly sued them for libel. From that time the press
persecuted him. He sued the Albany _Evening Journal_, edited by Thurlow
Weed, and received four hundred dollars damage. Weed thereupon wrote in the
New York _Tribune_:--
"The value of Mr. Cooper's character has been judicially determined. It
is worth exactly four hundred dollars."
Cooper promptly sued _The Tribune_, and was awarded two hundred dollars. In
the heat of this controversy Thurlow Weed incautiously opened Cooper's _The
Pathfinder_, which had just appeared, and sat up all night to finish the
book. During the progress of these suits, Cooper unfortunately wrote a
novel, _Home as Found_, satirizing, from a somewhat European point of view,
the faults of his countrymen. A friend, trying to dissuade him from
publishing such matter, wrote, "You lose hold on the American public by
rubbing down their shins with brickbats, as you do." Cooper, however,
published the book in 1838, and then there was a general rush to attack
him. A critic of his _History of the Navy of the United States of America_
(1839), a work which is still an authority for the time of which it treats,
abused the book and made reflections on Cooper's veracity.
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