[courtesy of Southern Womanhood
and Slavery: A Biography of
Louisa S. McCord, 1810-1879.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press,
2003, pp. xiv. 216, Leigh Fought]
Louisa Susanna McCord, political
theorist, essayist, poet, and book reviewer, was almost unique
among antebellum southern women. Her published works fill two
volumes and deal with subjects hardly touched by her female contemporaries.
At the same time, she administered a plantation, supported her
family, and—during the Civil War—was the hard-hitting
superintendent of an army hospital. She was in many ways an emancipated
woman.
Daughter of Langdon Cheves. Louisa
was well educated and confident of her abilities.