Iddo Cope
The Free Thinker
from "Southeast Corner of Tarrant County Before the Civil War"
by Sallie Hodges McKnight
Iddo Cope, a tall rather commanding man in appearance, with a massive head and clear blue eyes, was the original "Free Thinker" of the new settlement. He had a keen sympathy for the
under dog, combined with a singularly contradictory nature and an irresistible urge to unhorse the mighty, no matter how firmly seated on the popular side.
When there were no churches, denominations weak, and sinners flourished, he had himself ordained preacher in first one sect and then another, choosing the weakest, and brought to bear
against sinners and stronger sects such a fury of sound and gesture as to cause them to quake in their boots and lose large numbers of followers.
Later, when sectarians grew strong and sinners dwindled to a decided minority, he joined the ranks of the sinners and there remained, leaving instructions for his epitaph as follows: "Iddo
Cope, Lived and Died an Infidel."
He didn't believe in slavery, but believed far less in the disinterested righteousness of the "Yankee" and threw his full strength to the growing movement of secession, and later to the
Confederacy, pointing to the fact that General Grant retained his slaves up until the beginning of the war, while General Lee had given his slaves freedom some time before. He was deeply
resentful of New England abolitionists as "self-righteous Puritans" who, he said, "in the old country sold white men as slaves into the Barbadoos and were the first in the new country to build ships and trade in slaves." He came from England and preserved scrappy bits of family records from as far back as the Reformation, in which his ancestors actively participated,
probably first on one side and then the other!
One incident in his life was taken by the settlers as vindication of Providence versus Cope. Peeved at a long wet spell, Mr. Cope mounted a high rail fence and sought to have it out with whatever powers might be responsible for the irregularities of the weather. As lightning flashed and rain beat and his timid old wife waited in terrified silence, he called in a loud voice, "If there is a God, I call upon you to strike me with lightning!" Whereupon the sky began to clear, rain
and lightning ceased, the rail fence gave way, and Mr. Cope found himself submerged in a pool of muddy water.
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