RANKS | COMMANDS | BATTLES | BIOGRAPHY | READINGS
General, CSA
May 16, 1861
Adjutant- and Inspector-General, CSA
None
Samuel Cooper was born in Hackensack, New Jersey on June 12, 1798. His father, also a Samuel Cooper, had been one of the Minute Men who fired the first shots of the Revolution at Lexington in 1775 and served with distinction throughout the war. Following the military tradition set by his father, Samuel Cooper entered the U.S. Military Academy in 1813 at the age of 15. He graduated just two years later, finishing 36 in a class of 40.
Having just missed a chance to serve in the War of 1812, Cooper was commissioned a 2d lieutenant in the light artillery on December 11, 1815, commencing a career in uniform that lasted almost fifty years. He received his promotion to 1st lieutenant on July 6, 1821 with the 4th Artillery. In 1828 he assumed the importance post of aide-de-camp to then General-in-Chief Alexander Macomb. Eight years later on June 11, 1836 Cooper was promoted to captain and a little over two years later, on July 7, 1838, a brevet to major. On this same day Cooper was assigned to the War Department as an assistant adjutant general. Thereafter he never left staff service.
As chief-of-staff to Colonel William Worth during the Seminole War, Cooper experienced his one and only experience with combat on April 19, 1842 at Pil-Kil-Kaha, Florida. When the war came with Mexico, he was given a promotion to lieutenant colonel in the adjutant general's office, where the next year he received a brevet to full colonel for service in the late war. On July 15, 1852 Cooper was appointed by General-in-Chief Winfield Scott to the post of adjutant general of the United States Army, a post he was to hold for nearly nine years.
About eight months following this appointment, Jefferson Davis assumed the office of Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. The two worked well together, forming a close personal and professional bond. Furthermore, despite his northern birth, Cooper developed increasingly pro-southern beliefs; beliefs that were even further deepened by his marriage to the daughter of George Mason of Virginia. Cooper was also a great favorite of President Pierce whose conservative beliefs endeared him to Southerners.
As a result, when the secession crisis came, Cooper's allegiance lay with the South and he believed any use of force to compel the states to remain in the Union was clearly contrary to the Constitution. These beliefs, combined with his association with Davis, his family and friendship with many resigning officers, decided his course. On March 7, 1861, he resigned from the U.S. Army and returned home to Fairfax, Virginia. Five days later he left for Montgomery, where newly elected Confederate President Davis requested that Cooper forego a field command to assume the mundane matters of the Adjutant-General's office. Cooper assented and assumed that command on March 14 with the rank of brigadier general. When the Confederate Congress subsequently authorized the higher grade of full general, Davis nominated Cooper to head the list. Thus, effective May 16, 1861, Samuel Cooper, by seniority, held the highest rank in the Confederate Regular Army.
His responsibilities and close relationship with Davis became controversial from the beginning. Speaking of Cooper as an example, Bureau of War Chief Robert Kean lamented Davis' peculiarity of "preferring accommodating, civil-spoken persons of small capacity about him." Kean complained that thirty months into the war, Cooper still had not managed to produce a complete return of Confederate forces in the field and could not give "even a tolerably close guess."
Others agreed with Kean's conclusion about "the incompetency of the Adjutant and Inspector General," and most of Richmond regarded Cooper as merely Davis' tool, a charge that troubled Cooper throughout the war. Many officers treated him as if he were no more than a clerk, and Cooper occasionally complained of this to Davis, leading the president to scold more than one general. Yet by its very nature, Cooper's position was a powerless one, especially given that Davis was prone to retain the most important decision-making.
Perhaps Cooper's greatest contribution to the Confederate cause was the removal of War Department records from Richmond in April 1865, and protecting them until they could be turned over to Federal authorities in North Carolina after Johnston's surrender. Following the end of the war, he returned to his home near Alexandria, finding it had been replaced with a federal fort. Not to be discouraged, he moved into what had been an overseer's house and there took up farming until his death on December 3, 1876. Samuel Cooper, General, CSA, was laid to rest in Alexandria's Christ Church Cemetery.
Inside the Confederate Government
The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean
by Robert Garlick Hill Kean
Sketch of the Late General S. Cooper
Southern Historical Society Papers, May-June 1877
