Cooper's return to America in 1833 proved an unhappy event. The growing wave of dissatisfaction among many Americans with a respected and important writer (the first to win fame abroad) caused him to become bitter and hostile. He tried to defend himself in 1834 with A Letter to his Countrymen, which only aroused more controversy, but a further defense in 1838 with The American Democrat helped him little. In brief, Cooper found himself trapped between two worlds: in Europe, he could not live without expressing his love and hope for American ideas; in the United States, he could not accept without protest the vulgarity and ultra-nationalism, so alien to his aristocratic and cosmopolitan tendencies. He saw a decline of the true pioneer spirit in the onrush of expansion toward the West, and he deplored the failure of Christians to practice Christianity in an increasingly materialistic century. It is not difficult to understand why sensitive, proud, and patriotic readers turned against Cooper and thought that he had betrayed his nation by too lengthy a residence in Europe.
Cooper's last years were marked by constant battles to explain his views and to expound his philosophy about his homeland. He engaged in numerous lengthy embroilments with the press and with his neighbors in Cooperstown with suits for slander, libel, and property rights. Two more contributions to the saga of Natty Bumppo were published: The Pathfinder in 1840 and The Deerslayer in 1841. His study in two volumes, The History of the Navy of the United States of America, completed in 1839, was recognized as a sound, scholarly reference work. Cooper's last major literary achievement was a trilogy in which he took the side of the landlords in the Anti-Rent War—a position which further lessened his standing in the community and in outside circles. "The Littlepage Manuscripts," as the trilogy is sometimes designated, comprise the three novels, Satanstoe (1845), The Chainbearer (1845), and The Redskins (1846), in which Cooper traces the rise and fall of a family on the frontier from about 1740 until 1840. He returned in several other novels to the theme of the sea and continued to apply his views about contemporary manners and social issues to literary works, such as Wyandotté (1843) and The Crater (1848).
After returning to the United States, he did not again achieve the critical, popular, and financial rewards won prior to his European residence. However, Cooper was recognized and respected as an eminent representative of American literature because of his thirty-two novels and other writings. The American public, despite Cooper's quarrels with the press, neighbors, and general opinion, remembered his gifts and achievements during his lifetime. He died on September 14, 1851, at Cooperstown, near his beloved Otsego Lake, the Glimmerglass of The Deerslayer
.
