Webb, and The Commercial Advertiser, edited by William L.
Stone. Cooper promptly brought suit against them both. In his
action against Colonel Webb, his suit was for criminal libel and
the jury returned the verdict of not guilty. Cooper found that it
was much harder to send a man to jail for libel than it was to
collect monetary damage for a reputation. Cooper therefore
had better success when he brought suit against Thurlow Weed,
the editor of The Albany Evening Journal, who published several
unfavorable notices about Cooper and his books. Weed at the
time of the suit was unable to be present on account of sickness
in his family and a verdict of four hundred dollars against him
was given to Cooper. Weed sought in vain to have the case
reopened. Finding himself unsuccessful, he proceeded to set
forth his case in a letter to The New York Tribune published on
November 17, 1841. For the publication of this letter Cooper
brought suit against Greeley for libel. The jury, after several
ballots, finally returned the verdict of two hundred dollars.
Greeley having attended the trial in person proceeded to re-
port the event for his own paper. The report came within three
quarters of a column of filling the entire inside of The Tribune,
which he headed "The Cooperage of The Tribune" Extracts
were printed in more than two hundred papers and the novelist
proceeded to bring suit for a new libel several of them, in fact.
Greeley, now thoroughly aroused, prepared to take the suits
more seriously and hired the Honorable William H. Seward
as his attorney. The latter, by various hearings on demurrer
and by numerous expensive interlocutory proceedings, pre-
vented the case coming to trial.
PRESS RESTRICTIONS OF THE SENATE The Senate in 1841 attempted to exclude reporters from its Chamber on the ground that the regulations provided only for the admission of representatives from Washington newspapers. This attempt of exclusion was the last stand to favor the party organs of the Capital. For years these organs had been making enormous sums for printing the reports of Congress. Henry Clay asserted that $420,000 was thus paid to the three Washington organs, The Globe, run by Blair and Rieves, The National In-
