Coming to America, Dickinson College 1794-1815
America
Cooper first came to America in 1793 in order to find a suitable land for fellow dissentors-in-exile. He was accompanied by James Preiestly's son and together they concluded Northumberland Valley in Centeral Pennsylvania had fertile soil and an active political climate. In 1794, he returned to Northumberland with his family and Priestly's family to establish residency. They constructed a large, frame house that sat on the banks of the Susquehanna River.
-Cooper admired the American Government. He praised, "There is little fault to find with the Government
of America, either in principle or in practice: we have very few taxes to pay, and these are of
acknowledge neccessity, and moderate in amount: we have no animosities about religion, it is a
subject about which no questions are asked. The government is the government of the people,
and for the people."
He became a citizen in 1795 and was admitted to the Northumberland bar. But Cooper's radical philosophical and political views did not meet a warm reception in America. As a friend of Jefferson and an enthusiastic anti Federalist, he criticized the Sedition Act passed under John Adams' administration in the Northumberland Gazette, which he edited. This criticism led to Cooper being brought to trial in April 1800 under that very act.
-Cooper: "The country where every man and woman cannot read and write, has reason to complain of its rulers.
Is it a crime to doubt the capacity of a President? Have we advanced so far on the road to
despotism in this republican country that we dare not say our President is mistaken?"
He was convicted, sentenced, and served six months in prison. On his release, the popular Cooper was elected the president judge for the o Fourth District Court of Pennsylvania in 1804. His radicalism, combined with his enacting of rigorous procedures, eventually alienated even his strongest supporters, and he was removed from the bench in April, 1811. After this, Cooper focused his energetic mind to the academic path he would follow for the rest of his days.
Dickinson College
Cooper was faced with unemployment after his removial from the chair. David Watts and Thomas Duncan served on the Trustees of Dickinson College and were familiar with Cooper through his editorials in the Northumberland Gazette and the spread of Cooper's reputation as an established thinker. On August 9, 1811, Thomas Cooper became Dickinson College's first chemistry professor. In his Introductory Lecture,that lasted over 2 hours, Cooper gave his life history, demanded more chemistry books available at the college, and stressed the practicality of chemistry and how it can change life over time. Practicality was a prevalent theme to his lectures for the next four years Cooper spent at Dickinson College.
-Cooper: "Chemistry is of more immediate and useful application to the everyday concerns of life- that it
operates more upon our hourly comforts, than any other branch of knowledge whatever."
Rev. Jeremiah Atwater was President of Dickinson College during Coopers tenure. He and his fellow clergy members had great power and tremondus control over the college. Atwater was opposed to Cooper's religious views and believed he was poisoning the students. Atwater, being a conservative Presbyterian clergyman, mistrusted Cooper from the start and watched for any act of Cooper's that would corrupt the young men of the College. The rivalry between the two eventually embroiled the entire institution. By 1814, Cooper had organized faculty members Shaw, Nulty, and Berard against the President and issued his own stinging denunciation of Atwater. Rev. Atwater was shocked when he discovered Cooper would fail to show at church on some sabaths, instead performing scientific experiments in his classroom. Atwater wrote to a prominante Trustee at the time, Benjamin Rush, urging the dismisal of Cooper. In 1815, fed up with dealing with the clergy and the lack of funds at Dickinson College, Cooper decided to resign his professorship.
-Jeremiah Atwater: "If Mr. Cooper is continued here there is almost a moral certainty that a great
proportion of the young men will be come infidels."
