Leopold Copeland Parker Cowper (March 1811–17 July 1875), lieutenant governor of Virginia, was born at Macclesfield, the Isle of Wight County estate of his parents, William Cowper, a former naval officer, and Ann Pierce Parker Cowper. Because of his father's vicious emotional and physical abuse of his mother during her pregnancy, Cowper was born prematurely and remained sickly during his first year. In 1812 his mother, fearing for her life, fled Macclesfield with him and sought asylum with friends and relatives. The General Assembly granted his parents a legal separation early in January 1817, and his mother became his sole legal guardian. Perhaps as a consequence of his parents' violent union, Cowper never married, but later in life he formally adopted the four surviving daughters of his eldest brother and provided for them in his will. He also helped support several nephews, whose educational expenses strained his finances.

Cowper read law and practiced in Portsmouth and surrounding Norfolk County. Nominated on the Whig Party ticket, he narrowly won election in April 1847 to the first of two consecutive one-year terms in the House of Delegates as one of two men representing Norfolk County. During both terms he sat on the minor Committees to Examine the Enrolled Bills and to Examine the Public Armory.

At the beginning of the Civil War, Cowper owned one taxable slave, probably one of two men he had purchased from his mother's estate in 1849. The city of Norfolk fell to Union forces in May 1862, and the surrounding area came under the military control of the Union army and the civilian authority of the loyal Restored government, then meeting in Wheeling. During the summer of 1863 Cowper became a key figure in a clash between local civilian and military authorities that began over provision of relief for destitute families. The Portsmouth common council adopted an ordinance authorizing the mayor to collect rents due on all property owned by persons who refused to take an oath of allegiance to the United States and Restored governments and to use those funds for poor relief and to defray the costs of city government. Brigadier General Henry Morris Naglee, the newly arrived district commander, refused to enforce the law because he believed it infringed on military prerogative, although he did provide for destitute families Cowper identified late in July. In response, the common council passed a resolution on 1 August 1863 refusing to recognize Naglee's authority and appointing Cowper to a three-man committee to call on the Restored governor, President Abraham Lincoln, and the Union secretary of war in order to seek Naglee's removal and also clarification of the respective authorities of the civilian and military officials.

In mid-May 1863 a meeting of Norfolk and Portsmouth Unionists unanimously selected Cowper as candidate for lieutenant governor in the Restored government to replace a Berkeley County nominee who had declined to run. When it learned of the choice, the Unionist convention meeting in Alexandria acquiesced and substituted Cowper on the ticket for its own replacement candidate from Alexandria County. The candidates for governor and attorney general ran unopposed, but Cowper faced opposition from Gilbert S. Miner, whom he easily outpolled in the election on 28 May to win office with 2,361 votes.

Cowper's term was not scheduled to begin until 1 January 1864, but he started using his new title about the time that West Virginia attained statehood on 20 June 1863 and the sitting lieutenant governor, a resident of Mason County, resigned. Governor Francis Harrison Pierpont moved the Restored government to Alexandria effective 26 August 1863 and on 17 November appointed Cowper lieutenant governor so that the Restored Senate of Virginia would have a presiding officer when it opened on 7 December 1863. At the two assembly sessions that convened in Alexandria in that month and in December 1864, Cowper presided over a body that consisted at its full strength of six members, representing the districts of Accomack and Northampton Counties, Alexandria and Fairfax Counties, Elizabeth City County and the city of Hampton, Loudoun County, the city of Norfolk, and Norfolk and Princess Anne Counties. The session of 1863–1864 authorized calling a convention to revise the state constitution.

After the defeat of the Confederacy in April 1865, the Restored government moved to Richmond and assumed administrative responsibility for the entire state. Cowper presided over a five-day extra session of the Senate in June 1865 during which the General Assembly, at Pierpont's urging, restored voting rights to most supporters of the Confederacy, provided they took the amnesty oath or received special pardon from the president. Elections in October 1865 returned three of the six Restored senators, but most of the other thirty state senators who convened for the session of 1865–1866 were former Confederates. Cowper was not present on 4 December 1865 for the opening day of the new Senate and did not oversee the organization of the chamber, although he took his seat the next day. He presided during the two subsequent sessions and made his final appearance on 29 April 1867, when the Senate passed its traditional resolution of thanks for his services during the session.

Cowper's term expired on 1 January 1868, but late in March of that year a general order of the military commander with responsibility for Virginia extended his term until a successor could be named and qualified. Although the commanding general soon replaced Pierpont with a military governor, he did not name a new lieutenant governor, most likely because the General Assembly never met under Radical Reconstruction and therefore no presiding officer was required. Neither the Radical Republicans nor the coalition of moderates calling themselves True Republicans considered naming Cowper to their respective tickets in 1869. His successor won election in July and qualified on 8 September 1869.

Cowper returned to Portsmouth and continued to practice law. He may have fallen into straitened circumstances; two of his adopted daughters, who lived with him, taught school, and he also took in at least one boarder. Early in the 1870s he unsuccessfully sought compensation from the United States Senate for his valuable library, which he had stored at Smithfield during the Civil War and which Union troops had carried off or destroyed in April 1864. Leopold Copeland Parker Cowper died at his Portsmouth home of dropsy on 17 July 1875. After services at Saint John's Episcopal Church, his body was carried by steamer to Smithfield for burial with Masonic rites in the family cemetery at Macclesfield. His achievements had made so little mark locally that one Norfolk newspaper on successive days misreported Cowper's funeral as that of the nonexistent S. C. Cooper, the late governor.

Sources Consulted:
Birth date in Ann Pierce Parker Cowper, petition for divorce, 20 Nov. 1816, pp. 3–4, Legislative Petitions, Isle of Wight Co., Record Group 78, Library of Virginia (LVA); biography in Louis H. Manarin, Officers of the Senate of Virginia, 1776–1996 (1997), 91–92; United States Census Schedules, Norfolk Co., 1860 (age forty-six on 10 Aug. 1860), 1870 (age fifty-six on 28 June 1870), Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; some Cowper letters at David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C. and Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Va.,, in Francis Harrison Pierpont Executive Papers, Record Group 3, LVA, and printed in Report of Brigadier-General Henry M. Naglee of His Command of the District of Virginia… (1863), 38, and John C. Emmerson Jr., ed., Some Aspects and Incidents of Military Rule in Portsmouth, Virginia: From the Letter Book of Captain Daniel Messinger, Provost Marshal of Portsmouth,… November 9, 1863, to June 27, 1864 (1946); Norfolk and Portsmouth Herald, 24 Apr. 1847; Alexandria Gazette, 26 May 1863, 28 May 1863, 29 May 1863, 30 May 1863, 14 Dec. 1863; United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (1880–1901), 1st ser., vol. 29, pt. 2, 54–58; Report [of] the Committee on Claims [on] … the Memorial of L. C. P. Cowper, 42d Cong., 2d sess., 1872, Senate Rept. 148, serial 1483; Portsmouth Hustings Court Will Book, 1:221–223; Death Register, Portsmouth (variant death date of 19 July 1875 at age sixty-four), Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, LVA; death notice in Richmond Daily Dispatch, 19 July 1875 (with death date of 17 July 1875); accounts of funeral in Norfolk Virginian, 20, 21 July 1875 (misidentified as former governor S. C. Cooper); memorial resolutions in Norfolk Landmark, 20 July 1875 (with death date of 17 July 1875).

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Sara B. Bearss.

How to cite this page:
Sara B. Bearss, "{Leopold Copeland Parker Cowper (1811–1875)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2006 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Cowper_Leopold_Copeland_Parker, accessed [today's date]).

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