Back in Washington in 1852, Cooper was named adjutant general of the U.S. Army when his predecessor died in office. He continued in this position during the presidencies of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. He resigned three days after Lincoln took office. The decision to resign and join the South was probably not a hard decision for Cooper. As William C. Davis wrote, “He had married a Virginia woman and had ties to a distinguished Old Dominion heritage. As a longtime resident of Washington, a predominately Southern city in its social caste, his associations for decades had been Southern.”
Cooper switched sides, but he did not change jobs: he was named adjutant general of the Confederate Army and held that position for the entire conflict. On April 2, 1865, he was in the same church service as Jefferson Davis when the message came from Lee informing the president that the army could no longer defend Richmond. “That evening,” wrote William Davis, “the adjutant general boarded the train loaded with most of the cabinet, and along with his clerks, books, and records set off for Danville.”
The short-lived government-in-exile moved from Danville to Greensboro, N.C., then to Charlotte. On April 26, tired, unwell and far from young, Cooper advised the president he could go no farther. He stayed in the North Carolina city and preserved the records of the War Department. As ordered by Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge, Cooper surrendered the archive to Federal authorities when they arrived.
Ulysses S. Grant
How good was Cooper at his job? Some were critical of his performance, but Cooper maintained the support of the person who mattered most. After the war, in The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Jefferson Davis wrote that Cooper was “as pure in heart as he was sound in judgment.”
Postwar life was not an easy one for Samuel and Sarah Cooper. After a year in the Charlotte area, they returned to Alexandria to a home as ruined as their finances. They were still living in near-penury when Samuel died in 1876. Sarah lived until 1890.
In the next issue we will have a look at a Federal general who managed to dodge two (metaphorical) bullets and a senator (U.S. and C.S. both) with a wild streak.
Sources: William C. Davis, “General Samuel Cooper” in Leaders of the Lost Cause, edited by Gary W. Gallagher and Joseph T. Glatthaar, 2004; David Detzer, Allegiance, 2001; Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest, 2024; David Silkenat, Raising the White Flag, 2019; Encyclopedia Virginia,https://encyclopediavirginia.org; Officers of the Army and Navy (Regular) who Served in the Civil War, https://archive.org/stream/officersofarmyna00powe/officersofarmyna00powe_djvu.txt; David Heiby, https://gravestonestories.com/samuel-cooper-confederategeneral,“Samuel Cooper: From Respected Army Officer to Confederate General”; OR, Ser. I, Vol. I;
According to Detzer it is unlikely the two ever met.
Officers of the Army and Navy (Regular) Who Served in the Civil War Ibid.
James Mason was one of the two Confederate envoys who, in 1861, were taken from a British vessel in the famous Trent affair.
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