Samuel Cooper (General)

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Samuel Cooper

Samuel Cooper (born June 12, 1798 in New Hackensack in Dutchess County , New York ; † December 3, 1876 near Arlington , Virginia ) was an officer in the US Army and General of the Confederate Army in the Civil War .

Life

At the age of 15 he entered the Military Academy at West Point , New York, and graduated in 1815 as the 36th of his class. He was then assigned to the light artillery as a lieutenant. In 1827 he married Sarah Maria Mason and later became the brother-in-law of the Confederate diplomat James M. Mason. Sarah's sister, Ann Maria Mason, was the mother of Confederate General Fitzhugh Lee , a nephew of Robert Edward Lee .

Cooper served in several artillery formations until 1837. He then became Head of Procurement in the United States Department of War . Promoted to major in 1838 , Cooper was appointed Deputy Adjutant General of the Army. Nine years later, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and was still doing the same job. Participation in the Seminole War from 1841 to 1842 was one of the rare occasions on which he was able to leave Washington, DC . During the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848, Cooper was promoted to Brevet Colonel and on July 15, 1852 to Colonel of the Regular Army and appointed Adjutant General of the US Army.

When the outbreak of the Civil War was foreseeable, Cooper resigned from the US Army on March 7, 1861. His wife and family came from Virginia, and he himself had a close friendship with Jefferson Davis , former Secretary of War of the United States and later President of the Confederation . The family moved to Montgomery , Alabama, and Cooper was added to the Provisional Confederate Army as Brigadier General . He served as adjutant general and inspector general . Cooper held this post until the end of the war. On May 16, 1861, he was promoted to general. He was thus one of five generals at the time, or one of eight on the Confederate side during the war, and the first in this office. He was only responsible to Jefferson Davis.

Cooper's final act was to hand over the military documents and records to the United States government, which included them as part of the official summary of the records of the United and Confederate armies (The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies) published from 1880.

After the war, Cooper worked as a farmer on his Cameron farm near Alexandria , Virginia.

See also

literature

  • David J. Eicher: The Civil War in Books: An Analytical Bibliography . University of Illinois, 1997, ISBN 0-252-02273-4
  • Richard N. Current: Encyclopedia of the Confederacy (1993) (4 vol.) ( ISBN 0132759918 )
  • John H. Eicher & David J. Eicher: Civil War High Commands . Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3
  • Ezra J. Warner: Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders . Louisiana State University Press, 1959, ISBN 0-8071-0823-5

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Cooper, Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION U.S. Army officer and Confederate General in the American Civil War
DATE OF BIRTH June 12, 1798
PLACE OF BIRTH Dutchess County , NY
DATE OF DEATH December 3, 1876
Place of death near Arlington , Virginia