Slave Trade, attacking the Atlantic slave trade. In the mid to late 1780s Cooper fought passionately against "that infamous and impolitic traffic". He wrote that "negroes are men; susceptible of the same cultivation with ourselves", claimed that "as Englishmen, the blood of the murdered African is upon us, and upon our children, and in some day of retribution he will feel it, who will not assist to wash off the stain". After moving to America, Cooper's views began to shift. After moving to South Carolina in 1819, he disavowed his previous anti-slavery views and purchased several enslaved families and began to defend slavery on Benthamist utlitarian grounds. In an 1826 essay, he expressed his doubts that "in South Carolina or Georgia... the rich lands could be cultivated without slave labour". Cooper saw Africans as morally and intellectually inferior and believed they were happy to be provided for within the context of slavery. In an 1826 essay, Cooper wrote that the "emancipation of the Slaves, would surely convert them into idle and useless vagabonds, and thieves; as every Southern man conversant with negro habits and propensities well knows". Later that year, Cooper wrote in a private letter that "I do not say the blacks are a distinct species, but I have not the slightest doubt of their being an inferior variety of the human species; and not capable of the same improvement as the whites." The 1830 census lists the Cooper household as containing eight enslaved persons. Philosophy In addition to Thomas Jefferson, he was friends with James Madison and several Governors of South Carolina. As a philosopher he was a follower of David Hartley, Erasmus Darwin, Priestley, and François-Joseph-Victor Broussais; he was a physiological materialist, and a severe critic of Scottish metaphysics. Later years The last years of his life were spent in preparing an edition of the Statutes at Large of the state, which was completed by David James McCord (1797–1855) and published in ten volumes (1836–1841). Cooper died in Columbia on the 11th of May 1839. He is interred in the churchyard at Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbia, South Carolina. Works Letters on the Slave-Trade (London, 1787) Tracts, Ethical, Theological, and Political (1790) Information concerning America (1790) Political Essays (Northumberland PA, 1799) [Two of the essays are written by Elizabeth Priestley née Ryland] Account of the Trial of Thomas Cooper, of Northumberland (Philadelphia, 1800) The Bankrupt Law of