It is related that, in 1832, while he was at Paris, an article was shown him in an American newspaper, purporting to be a criticism on one of his works, but reflecting with much asperity on his personal character.  “I care nothing,” he is reported to have said, “for the criticism, but I am not indifferent to the slander.  If these attacks on my character should be kept up five years after my return to America, I shall resort to the New York courts for protection.”  He gave the newspaper press of this state the full period of forbearance on which he had fixed, but finding that forbearance seemed to encourage assault, he sought redress in the courts of law.

When these litigations were first begun, I recollect it seemed to me that Cooper had taken a step which would give him a great deal of trouble, and effect but little good.  I said to myself—­

“Alas!  Leviathan is not so tamed!”

As he proceeded, however, I saw that he had understood the matter better than I. He put a hook into the nose of this huge monster, wallowing in his inky pool and bespattering the passers-by; he dragged him to the land and made him tractable.  One suit followed another; one editor was sued, I thinly half-a-dozen times; some of them found themselves under a second indictment before the first was tried.  In vindicating himself to his reader, against the charge of publishing one libel, the angry journalist often floundered into another.  The occasions of these prosecutions seem to have been always carefully considered, for Cooper was almost uniformly successful in obtaining verdicts.  In a letter of his, written in February, 1843, about five years, I think, from the commencement of the first prosecutions, he says, “I have beaten every man I have sued, who has not retracted his libels.”

In one of these suits, commenced against the late William L. Stone of the Commercial Advertiser, and referred to the arbitration of three distinguished lawyers, he argued himself the question of the authenticity of his account of the battle of Lake Erie, which was the matter in dispute.  I listened to his opening; it was clear, skilful, and persuasive, but his closing argument was said to be splendidly eloquent.  “I have heard nothing like it,” said a barrister to me, “since the days of Emmet.”

Cooper behaved liberally towards his antagonists, so far as pecuniary damages were concerned, though some of them wholly escaped their payment by bankruptcy.  After, I believe, about, six years of litigation, the newspaper press gradually subsided into a pacific disposition towards its adversary, and the contest closed with the account of pecuniary profit and loss, so far as he was concerned, nearly balanced.  The occasion of these suits was far from honorable to those who provoked them, but the result was I had almost said, creditable to all parties; to him, as the courageous prosecutor, to the administration of justice in this country, and to the docility of the newspaper press, which he had disciplined into good manners.