John Sherman Cooper (August 23, 1901 – February 21, 1991) was an American politician, jurist, and diplomat. He served three non-consecutive, partial terms in the United States Senate before being elected to two full terms in 1960 and 1966, representing Kentucky. He also served as U.S. Ambassador to India from 1955 to 1956 and U.S. Ambassador to East Germany from 1974 to 1976. He was the first Republican to be popularly elected to more than one term as a senator from Kentucky and, in both 1960 and 1966, he set records for the largest victory margin for a Kentucky senatorial candidate from either party.
Cooper's first political service was as a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1928 to 1930. In 1929, he was elected county judge of Pulaski County. After a failed gubernatorial bid in 1939, he joined the U.S. Army in 1942. During World War II, he earned the Bronze Star Medal for reorganizing the Bavarian judicial system after the allied victory in Europe. While still in Germany, he was elected circuit judge for Kentucky's 28th circuit. He returned home to accept the judgeship, which he held for less than a year before resigning to seek election to A. B. "Happy" Chandler's vacated seat in the U.S. Senate. He won the seat by 41,823 votes, the largest victory margin by any Republican for any office in Kentucky up to that time.
During his first term in the Senate, Cooper voted with the majority of his party just 51% of the time. He was defeated in his re-election bid in 1948, after which he accepted an appointment by President Harry S. Truman as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly and served as a special assistant to Secretary of State Dean Acheson during the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Cooper was again elected to a partial term in the Senate in 1952. The popular Cooper appeared likely to be re-elected in 1954 until the Democrats nominated former Vice President Alben W. Barkley. Cooper lost the general election and was appointed Ambassador to India by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1955. Cooper gained the confidence of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and dramatically improved relations between the U.S. and the recently independent state of India, helping rebuff Soviet hopes of expanding communism in Asia. Barkley died in 1956, and Eisenhower requested that Cooper seek Barkley's open seat. Cooper reluctantly acquiesced and was elected to serve the rest of Barkley's term.
In 1960, Cooper was re-elected, securing his first full, six-year term in the Senate. Newly elected President John F. Kennedy – Cooper's former Senate colleague – chose Cooper to conduct a secret fact-finding mission to Moscow and New Delhi. Following Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Cooper to the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination. Cooper soon became an outspoken opponent of Johnson's decision to escalate U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War, consistently advocating negotiation with the North Vietnamese instead. After Cooper's re-election in 1966, he worked with Idaho Democrat Frank Church on a series of amendments designed to de-fund further U.S. military operations in the region. These amendments were hailed as the first serious attempt by Congress to curb presidential authority over military operations during an ongoing war. Aging and increasingly deaf, Cooper did not seek re-election in 1972. His last acts of public service were as Ambassador to East Germany from 1974 to 1976 and as an alternate delegate to the United Nations in 1981. He died in a Washington, D.C., retirement home on February 21, 1991, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Early life John Sherman Cooper was born August 23, 1901, in Somerset, Kentucky."Cooper, John Sherman". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress He was the second child and first son of seven children born to John Sherman and Helen Gertrude (Tartar) Cooper.Schulman, p. 16 The Cooper family had been prominent in the Somerset area since brothers Malachi and Edward Cooper migrated from South Carolina along the Wilderness Trail and through the Cumberland Gap around 1790, shortly after Daniel Boone.Schulman, p. 15 His father's parents – staunch Baptists – were active in the anti-slavery movement in the nineteenth century, and the elder John Sherman Cooper (called "Sherman") was named after the Apostle John and William Tecumseh Sherman, a hero of the Union in the Civil War.Smoot, p. 134 The family was very active in local politics; six of Cooper's ancestors, including his father, were elected county judges in Pulaski County, and two had been circuit judges."Whittledycut". Time Sherman Cooper engaged in numerous successful business ventures and was known as the wealthiest man in Somerset.Krebs, "John Sherman Cooper Dies at 89"Finch, p. 162 At the time of John Sherman Cooper's birth, his father was serving as collector of internal revenue in Kentucky's 8th congressional district, a position to which he had been appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt.Smoot, p. 135
During his youth, Cooper worked delivering newspapers, in railroad yards, and in his father's coal mines in Harlan County.Hewlett and Merrit, "John Sherman Cooper Dies at 89" Despite having formerly served as county school superintendent, Cooper's father had a low opinion of the public schools, and until he was in the fifth grade, Cooper was privately tutored by a neighbor.Schulman, p. 17 While his father was away on business in Texas, his mother sent him to sixth grade at the public school, which he attended thereafter. At Somerset High School, he played both basketball and football. After the outbreak of World War I, Cooper joined an informal military training unit at the high school.Smoot, p. 144 Two of the school's instructors organized the boys into two companies, but Cooper, who was given the rank of captain, later recalled that "they taught us how to march and that's about all." During his senior year, Cooper served as class president and class poet. In 1918, he graduated second in his high school class and was chosen to give the commencement speech.
After graduation, Cooper matriculated at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.Cooper, p. 227 While at Centre, Cooper was accepted into the Beta Theta Pi fraternity.Howard, "John Sherman Cooper" He also played defensive end on the Praying Colonels' football team.Smoot, p. 146 Cooper was a letterman on the team, playing alongside football notables Bo McMillin, Red Roberts, Matty Bell, and Red Weaver. Another member of the team, John Y. Brown Sr., would later become one of Cooper's political rivals. Coached by Charley Moran, the team was undefeated in four games in the 1918 season, which was shortened by an outbreak of the Spanish flu.
Although Centre was known as one of Kentucky's foremost colleges, Cooper's father wanted him to broaden his education and, after one year at Centre, Cooper transferred to Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut.Schulman, p. 19 At Yale, he was a classmate of his future U.S. Senate colleague, Stuart Symington. Cooper was active in many extracurricular activities at Yale, including the Sophomore German Committee, the Junior Promenade Committee, the Student Council, the Class Day Committee, the Southern Club, the University Club, and Beta Theta Pi.Smoot, p. 151 A member of the Undergraduate Athletic Association, he played football and basketball, becoming the first person in Yale history to be named captain of the basketball team in his junior and senior years. In his senior year, he was accepted into the elite Skull and Bones society but regretted not being accepted into Phi Beta Kappa. Upon graduation, he was voted most popular and most likely to succeed in his class.
Cooper earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale in 1923 and enrolled at Harvard Law School later that year. During the summer break of 1924, he returned to Kentucky, where his father, dying of Bright's disease, told him that he would soon become the head of the family, and that most of the family's resources had been lost in the economic recession of the early 1920s.Smoot, p. 154 Cooper returned to Harvard after his father's death, but soon discovered that he could not simultaneously pursue a law degree and manage his family's affairs. He was admitted to the bar by examination in 1928 and opened a legal practice in Somerset. Over the next 20 years, he sold his father's remaining assets, paid off the family debts, and financed a college education for his six siblings.
Early political career After being urged into politics by his uncle, Judge Roscoe Tartar, Cooper ran unopposed for a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives as a Republican in 1927. As a member of the House, he was one of only three Republicans to oppose Republican Governor Flem D. Sampson's unsuccessful attempt to politicize the state department of health; the measure failed by a single vote.Schulman, p. 21 Cooper supported the governor's plan to provide free textbooks for the state's school children and sponsored legislation to prohibit judges from issuing injunctions to end labor strikes, although the latter bill did not pass.
In 1929, Cooper declared his candidacy for county judge of Pulaski County.Schulman, p. 22 His opponent, the incumbent, was the president of Somerset Bank and the former law partner of Cooper's father. Cooper won the election, however, beginning the first of his eight years as county judge. During his service, he was required by law to enforce eviction notices, but often helped those he evicted find other housing or gave them money himself, earning him the nickname "the poor man's judge". He reportedly became so depressed by the poverty and suffering of his constituents during the Great Depression that he had a nervous breakdown and took a leave of absence to seek psychiatric treatment.
Cooper served on the board of trustees for the University of Kentucky from 1935 to 1946. In 1939, he sought the Republican gubernatorial nomination. As a result of a mandatory primary election law passed in 1935, the Republican nominee would not be chosen by a nominating convention, as was typical for the party. Cooper lost the nomination to King Swope, a Lexington circuit court judge and former congressman, by a vote of 121,297 (59%) to 73,305 (36%).
Service in World War II Although well above the draft age at 41 years old, Cooper enlisted for service in the United States Army in World War II in 1942. Immediately offered an officer's commission, he chose instead to enlist as a private.Schulman, p. 26 After basic training, he enrolled in Officer Candidate School at the Fort Custer Training Center in Michigan. He studied military government and graduated second in his class of 111 students.Finch, p. 163 In 1943, he was commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the XV Corps of General George Patton's Third Army as a courier in the military police.Schulman, p. 28 Cooper served in France, Luxembourg, and Germany. After liberating the Buchenwald concentration camp, Patton ordered the entire population of the nearby city of Weimar to go through it and observe the conditions; Cooper also viewed the camp at that time.Schulman, p. 31