William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic [Paperback]

Alan Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 27, 1996

An innovative work of biography, social history, and literary analysis, this Pulitzer Prize-winning book presents the story of two men, William Cooper and his son, the novelist James Fennimore Cooper, who embodied the contradictions that divided America in the early years of the Republic. Taylor shows how Americans resolved their revolution through the creation of new social forms and new stories that evolved with the expansion of our frontier. of photos.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In 1786 William Cooper, determined to become a self-made gentleman of substance in post-revolutionary America, founded Cooperstown, N.Y., through a dodgy land deal. His town rose to become county seat, and Cooper became a judge and then a congressman. He lost most of the prestige he earned later, when he overstretched himself, and his local patronage weakened when he backed the Federalists against the victorious Republicans. Nonetheless, his son, James Fenimore Cooper, the early 19th century's best-selling novelist, wrote essentially a justification of his father in his third novel, The Pioneers (1823). Taylor's book--a combination of biography, personal history, social history, literary exegesis and analysis of father-son dynamics--charts the interplay between the fact and the fiction of the days when upstate New York was the frontier. William Cooper's Town won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for history. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Taylor's account of politician William Cooper and his son, the novelist James Fenimore Cooper, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Bks Ed. Sept.1996, 1st Print edition (August 27, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679773002
• ISBN-13: 978-0679773009
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1.1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #194,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating account of early America, April 4, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Vienna, Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (Paperback)

This is the story of William Cooper, the founder of Cooperstown, New York, and of how his son, James Fenimore Cooper, used his father's life and experiences in his novels. Described in this way, this sounds like a narrow book, of interest mainly to specialists. But anyone interested in early America should read this book: it reveals truths not only about these two men but about the whole period. One of the key themes of the book is that the Revolution, which in a sense made William Cooper by pushing aside the old aristocracy of New York, also unmade him by creating an anti-aristocratic politics that ousted him and other Federalists in 1800. A fascinating minor detail: the city fathers, in their effort to maintain a proper tone in Cooperstown in the early 1800s, outlawed stick ball, the precursor of baseball.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FATHER WAS THE PIONEER, July 4, 2001

By 

MIKE GRECO (HONOLULU, HI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (Paperback)

The tale of James Fenimore Cooper's father on the New York frontier in the 1790s is an Horatio Alger story run amuck. Born to a poor Quaker farm family, William Cooper learned the craft of making and repairing wheels before reinventing himself as a land speculator, founder of Cooperstown, judge, congressman, patrician farmer and Federalist party powerhouse.

Alan Taylor's WILLIAM COOPER'S TOWN: POWER AND PERSUASION ON THE FRONTIER OF THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC is an outstanding biography of an archetypical American character, an extraordinary social history of life and politics on the late eighteenth-century frontier and a brilliant exercise in literary analysis.

This is a wonderful read. Taylor's lively prose, compelling narrative and original, fresh story sustained my interest from cover to cover. I never would have imagined such a dull title could cover such a marvelous book. WILLIAM COOPER'S TOWN certainly deserves the Pulitzer Prize it was awarded.

Taylor not only describes William Cooper's rise from rags to riches and even more meteoric fall but analyzes Cooper's political odyssey in America's frontier democratic workshop.

"As an ambitious man of great wealth but flawed gentility, Cooper became caught up in the great contest of postrevolutionary politics: whether power should belong to traditional gentlemen who styled themselves 'Fathers of the People' or to cruder democrats who acted out the new role of 'Friends of the People.'"

Taylor argues "Cooper faced a fundamental decision as he ventured into New York's contentious politics. Would he affiliate with the governor and the revolutionary politics of democratic assertion? Or would he endorse the traditional elitism championed by...Hamilton." "Brawny, ill educated, blunt spoken, and newly enriched," writes Taylor, "Cooper had more in common with George Clinton than with his aristocratic rivals." "For a rough-hewn, new man like Cooper, the democratic politics practiced by Clinton certainly offered an easier path to power. Yet, like Hamilton, Cooper wanted to escape his origins by winning acceptance into the genteel social circles where Clinton was anathema." Taylor concludes "Cooper's origins pulled him in one political direction, his longing in another."

James Fenimore Cooper's third novel, THE PIONEERS, is an ambivalent, fictionalized examination of his father's failure to measure up to the genteel stardards William Cooper set for himself and that his son James internalized. The father's longing became the son's demand.

Taylor analyzes the father-son relationship, strained by Williams decline before ever fully measuring up to the stardards he had set, and the son's fictionalized account of this relationship.

James Fenimore Cooper spent most of his adult life seeking the "natural aristocrat" his father wanted to be and compensating for his father's shortcomings. It is ironic that the person James Fenimore Cooper found to be the embodiment of the "natural aristocrat" his father had longed to be and that he had created in THE CRATER and his most famous character, Natty Bumppo, was the quintessential "Friend of the People"--Andrew Jackson.

I enjoyed this book immensely and give it my strongest recommendation!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Struggle for Gentility on the Frontier, November 20, 2003

By 

Daniel J. Blinka (Madison, WI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (Paperback)

William Cooper lived through the most prolific time of change in American history. And in telling the story of his time and life Alan Taylor has delivered to his audience a compelling documentation and narrative of how this period of remarkable transformation affected one individual and his family, the settlement of the New York frontier, and the political landscape of the frontier. William Cooper's Town is, first and foremost, a biography, yet it also functions as a regional history, and a literary analysis of James Fennimore Cooper's the Pioneers. With respect to these three features, Taylor divided his book into three sections: ascent, power, and legacies. Each tells a different story of William Cooper and exposes disparate characteristics of his personality and his success as a land owner and speculator, politician, and father (both of the people and of his children). Most important, each section of Taylor's unique book relates to Cooper's ambition for gentility, something which he vehemently strived for both in himself and his children. The reader gains a keen sense of the difficulty and unpredictability of frontier settlement from William Cooper's Town. Cooper acquired and lost his entire fortune in twenty-five demanding and challenging years. In addition, Cooper exemplifies the restraints left on social mobility even after the American Revolution. Cooper never obtained the greatly sought after gentry status.
Taylor's story of William Cooper widens our perspective of the early Republic. The era dominated by elite political figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams, also included important characters on the periphery. While much of the United States early success is owed to the "founding fathers" its expansion must also be credited to men like William Cooper even if he was not a political genius and erudite.
Taylor's book is not a survey; rather it is mostly William Cooper's story. It is not the complete social, political, and economic history of the New York frontier. The closest Taylor comes to this is his discussion of political debates within Otsego County which effected the entire state's political status. Still, Taylor's book will certainly support anyone who researches a broader study in the future.