Thomas Abthorpe Cooper America's Premier Tragedian

by Geddeth Smith

Cooper's career stretched through the terms of America's first eleven presidents, and during those years he toured from one end of the Union to the other, often driving from town to town in his own gig at the reins of a team of galloping horses hitched in tandem. Like a comet he traveled, as one of his contemporaries described it: north to Boston, south to New Orleans, across the frontier, and on to the burgeoning river towns along the banks of the Mississippi, keeping alive for the audiences to which he played, probably more than any other actor of his generation, the great classical plays of the English repertory.

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