title: William J. Cooper Jr.
text: # William J. Cooper Jr.
  
  William J. Cooper Jr. (born October 22, 1940) is an American historian who specializes in the history of the American South, and is regarded as a leading expert on the life of Jefferson Davis.
  
  ## Life and career
  
  Cooper studied at Princeton University and Johns Hopkins University. After two years of service as an officer in the U.S. Army, he went on to spend his entire academic career at Louisiana State University.
  
  ## Works
  
  * The Conservative Regime: South Carolina, 1877-1890 (1968)
  * The South and the Politics of Slavery, 1828-56 (1979)
  * Liberty and Slavery (1983)
  * The American South: A History (1996) (with Tom E. Terrill)
  * Jefferson Davis, American (2000)
  * Jefferson Davis and the Civil War Era (2008)
  * We Have the War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861 (2012)
  * The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics (2017)
  * Approaching Civil War and Southern History (2019)
  