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February 10, 2007
Peter the Great
By Barry CasselmanHe was America's first public philanthropist. He built the first steam locomotive. He invented Jello. He was one of the handful of men who were responsible for the first transatlantic cable. He put the first elevator shaft in a building (and did it before the elevator was invented!). He was the Bill Gates of his day.
Peter Cooper was born in New York in 1791. (George Washington was in his first term as president.) He died in 1883. He was one of the greatest American capitalists of the 19th century, but what made him unique was his original and compassionate notion that, having made a great fortune, he needed to give much of it back to the community in which he lived. Born in modest means, he routinely gave his money to institutions and causes for the poor and for poltical reform. In 1876, at the age of 85, he ran for president of the United States as the nominee of the National Independent Party, He received only 1% of the vote, but many of his then radical ideas later became the standards of public policy today.
His most distinctive and visible contribution was a building, the Cooper Union, in New York City that was completed in 1858. It was then, and is now, a school of architecture, engineering and fine arts. It was intended for the poor of New York who otherwise could not attend classes. Then, as now, no one paid to attend the school's classes. The only requirement was, as Peter Lyons notes in his long 1959 article on Cooper in American Heritage, superior intelligence. Men and women could attend, as could the young and old. It also provided the only public library in the city of its kind, open to all. Since the day it opened, there has not ever been a vacancy for its classes. It lists great artists and architects, famous engineers and a Nobel prize winner among its graduates. Over the years, its faculty and students became more and more distinguished. Today, with 600 students, it is one of the finest schools of its kind in the nation.
But Peter Cooper had a second purpose in mind with his Cooper Union. In the building's basement, he constructed a Great Hall, then holding 1100 persons, that was to be a forum for new and exciting ideas.
The most famous speech given there was, Abraham Lincoln's two-hour address on the evening of February 27, 1860. Lincoln, at that moment, was the darkest of dark horses for the Republican nomination for president in 1860. The new national party which had replaced the Whig Party in 1856, now had a chance to elect a president, because the crisis of the slavery issue had split the Democratic Party into a northern faction and a southern faction. Some New York Republicans, however, thought that their governor, William Seward, then the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, could not win the general election. They planned a series of speeches, to be given by prominent midwestern Republicans, to find a candidate who could win. Among those they invited was Lincoln, then a successful railroad attorney who had served one term in Congress, but had lost an 1858 senate race in Illinois to Stephen Douglas (who by 1860 was the almost certain Democratic nominee for president). Lincoln, however, could not come to New York for the scheduled autumn, 1859 speeches at the New York YMCA, but was able to come in February, 1860. By that time, the organizers had moved the venue to the larger Cooper Union, opened only a year before.
Lincoln's speech is arguably the most important political speech in American history. Not as poetic as the more famous Gettysburg Address or his Second Inaugural, his Cooper Union speech destroyed the pretense of the intellectual argument for slavery, and electrified his Cooper Union audience. Lincoln had also cagily brought with him copies of his speech which he distributed to the press, and within a few days, he was a political sensation in the North and among Republicans. The speech almost certainly made him the eventual nominee and president.
Cooper Union continued to be a forum for important American speeches and ideas throughout the 19th century, the early 20th century, and to the present time. After Lincoln's speech, Susan B. Anthony, Horace Greeley, Mark Twain, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert Ingersoll, Victoria Woodhull and Thomas Huxley spoke there. In recent years, Bill Clinton and other contemporary figures have spoken there.
I have been playing a small part in organizing a special event that will take place at Cooper Union in its Great Hall on February 28, 2007. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich will walk on to this historic stage (the iron podium Lincoln used is still in the Hall) to have a dialogue about the biggest issues and challenges facing the nation as we approach the 2008 national elections. Harold Holzer, the great Lincoln scholar, is the event chairman. Its purpose is to lift public discourse from sound bites and insults, and to engage the public's interest in how to solve America¹s problems. Governor Cuomo and Speaker Gingrich are two of the best and most thoughtful public speakers in America. It should be a fascinating and historic evening. As part of their dialogue. Cuomo and Gingrich will challenge the presidential candidates of both parties to come to Cooper Union on subsequent evenings to present their ideas. I hope these aspirants are not timid, and take up the challenge.
I learned about Peter Cooper and the history of his building in the course of planning for this event. I had intended to write another kind of piece to talk about this series, but I soon realized that to speak about the ambitious goals of Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Gingrich without telling about Mr. Cooper would be to miss the precedent of such a significant American whose generosity and vision was so powerful and far-reaching that his contributions remain at the center stage of American public life and idealism more than 150 years later.
It was said that Peter Cooper stopped by his building almost every day from the day it opened until he drew his last breath. He was one of America's greatest and most unheralded public figures. His restless spirit will undoubtedly be in the Great Hall on February 28 as a new chapter in the historicexperiment that we call the United States of America takes place.
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