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.

It was while he was in the midst of these litigations, that he published,