The Man Who Never Fought: Samuel Cooper

[jkBluesman]

Gen. Samuel Cooper (b. 1798, d. 1876). Cooper served the United States and the Confederacy as Adjutant General but had only very limited experience as field commander. Born in upstate New York he went to West Point at the age of fourteen. Graduating in 1815 he served at a number of garrisons before becoming more and more a staff officer. Only during the Second Seminole Wars did he see some field action. For his planning and logistical skills he was breveted colonel after the Mexican War. His career did not end there as by 1852 he had become Adjutant General. In Washington he made close connections to Jefferson Davis the then Secretary of War. The ties to Davis, his marriage to a Virginian and the property he got in Virginia made the Northerner to side with the South in 1861. He resigned from the army to serve in the same capacity in the Confederate army. When the rank of full general was created in the South, Cooper became senior general making him the highest ranking officer in the Confederacy followed by Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard. Cooper helped to organize the War Department and brought the needed knowledge for protocol and procedure. He was usually praised by his superiors including Davis although Cooper was sometimes criticised for the slowness in making decisions. He was dedicated to duty even after Richmond fell in April 1865. Cooper turned over the archives of the War Department to US authorities after his surrender. The war had destroyed his estate in Virginia thus Cooper lived from the land and died impoverished in 1876. “The many who measure the value of an officer's service by the conspicuous part he played upon the fields of battle, may not properly estimate the worth of Cooper's services in the war between the States, but those who like yourself were in a position to know what he did, what he prevented, what he directed, will not fail to place him among those who contributed most to whatever was achieved”, wrote Davis in a letter to Lee a few months after Cooper’s death.

He seems to be another Twiggs (ironically the last order he signed as US Adjutant General was the order to relieve Twiggs from command as he had surrendered federal property to the state of Texas), so I think he has to get bad ratings although he was gifted elsewhere:

Ldr: 1
Tact: 2
Init: 1
Cmd: 3
Cav: 0

Specials: maybe foragers? or -1