The next year Cooper made his appearance before the public in a new department of writing; his Naval History of the United States was brought out in two octavo volumes at Philadelphia, by Carey and Lea.  In writing his stories of the sea, his attention had been much turned to this subject, and his mind filled with striking incidents from expeditions and battles in which our naval commanders had been engaged.  This made his task the lighter; but he gathered his materials with great industry, and with a conscientious attention to exactness, for he was not a man to take a fact for granted, or allow imagination to usurp the place of inquiry He digested our naval annals into a narrative, written with spirit it is true, but with that air of sincere dealing which the reader willingly takes as a pledge of its authenticity.

An abridgment of the work was afterwards prepared and published by the author.  The Edinburgh Review, in an article professing to examine the statements both of Cooper’s work and of The History of the English Navy, written by Mr. James, a surgeon by profession, made a violent attack upon the American historian.  Unfortunately, it took James’s narrative as its sole guide, and followed it implicitly.  Cooper replied in the Democratic Review for January, 1840, and by a masterly analysis of his statements, convicting James of self-contradiction in almost every particular in which he differed from himself, refuted both James and the reviewer.  It was a refutation which admitted of no rejoinder.

Scarce anything in Cooper’s life was so remarkable, or so strikingly illustrated his character, as his contest with the newspaper press.  He engaged in it after provocations, many and long endured, and prosecuted it through years with great energy, perseverance, and practical dexterity, till he was left master of the field.  In what I am about to say of it, I hope I shall not give offence to any one, as I shall speak without the slightest malevolence towards those with whom he waged this controversy.  Over some of them, as over their renowned adversary, the grave has now closed.  Yet where shall the truth be spoken, if not beside the grave?

I have already alluded to the principal causes which provoked the newspaper attacks upon Cooper.  If he had never meddled with questions of government on either side of the Atlantic, and never satirized the newspaper press, I have little doubt that he would have been spared these attacks.  I cannot, however, ascribe them all, or even the greater part of them, to personal malignity.  One journal followed the example of another, with little reflection, I think, in most cases, till it became a sort of fashion, not merely to decry his works, but to arraign his motives.