Louisa Susanna Cheves McCord (1810-1879) was one of the most remarkable figures in the intellectual history of antebellum America. A conservative intellectual, she broke the confines of Southern gender roles. Over the past decade historians have begun to pay attention to McCord and find her indespensible to understanding American culture. Among Southerners before the Civil War, she is ranked with Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, James Madison, Sarah Grimke, John C. Calhoun, George Fitzhugh, and Frederick Douglass. This volume collects all of her poetry, drama, and correspondence, her account of Sherman's occupation of Columbia, and a memoir of her father, politician and statesman Langdon Cheves. Its publication, together with the previously published Louisa S. McCord: Poltical and Social Essays, makes available all of Louisa McCords's varied writings.
Breaking the confines of Southern gender roles through her outspoken conservative writings, Louisa McCord became one of the most remarkable intellectual figures in antebellum America. This is a selection of her best-known and most significant pieces ranging from poetry to correspondence.
Southern Womanhood and Slavery is the first full-length biography of Louisa S. McCord, one of the most intriguing intellectuals in antebellum America. The daughter of South Carolina planter and politician Langdon Cheves, and an essayist in her own right, McCord supported unregulated free trade and the perpetuation of slavery and opposed the advancement of women’s rights. This study examines the origins of her ideas. Leigh Fought constructs an exciting narrative that follows McCord from her childhood as the daughter of a state representative and president of the Bank of the United States through her efforts to accept her position as wife and mother, her career as an author and plantation mistress, and the Union invasion of South Carolina during the Civil War, to the end of her life in the emerging New South. Fought analyzes McCord’s poetry, letters, and essays in an effort to comprehend her acceptance of slavery and the submission of women. Fought concludes that McCord came to a defense of slavery through her experience with free labor in the North, which also reinforced her faith in the paternalist model for preserving social order. McCord’s life as a writer on “unfeminine” subjects, her reputation as strong-minded and masculine, her late marriage, her continued ownership of her plantation after marriage, and her position as the matron of a Civil War hospital contradicted her own philosophy that women should remain the quiet force behind their husbands. She lived during a time of social flux in which free labor, slavery, and the role of women underwent dramatic changes, as well as a time that enabled her to discover and pursue her intellectual ambitions. Fought examines the conflict that resulted when those ambitions clashed with McCord’s role as a woman in the society of the South. McCord’s voice was an interesting, articulate, and necessary feminine addition to antebellum white ideology. Moreover, her story demonstrates the ways in which southern women negotiated through patriarchy without surrendering their sense of self or disrupting the social order. Engaging and very readable, Southern Womanhood and Slavery will be of special interest to students of southern history and women’s studies, as well as to the general reader.
Combining established work with that of recent provocative scholarship on the antebellum South, this collection of essays puts students in touch with some of the central debates in this dynamic field. It includes substantial excerpts from the work of Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who lay out the influential interpretation of the South as a `paternalistic' society and culture, and contributions from more recent scholars who provide dissenting or alternative interpretations of the relations between masters and slaves and men and women. The essays draw on a wide range of disciplines, including economics, psychology and anthropology to investigate the nature of plantation and family life in the South. Explanatory notes guide the reader through each essay and the Editor's introduction places the work in its historiographical context.
In this brilliant collection, five historians and literary critics explore the many ways that southern writers influence and are influenced by their region. Christopher Morris examines the relationship between economic development and the humor of such “Old Southwestern” writers as Augustus B. Longstreet and Johnson Jones Hooper, while Susan A. Eacker explains how South Carolina author Louisa McCord came to defend slavery. Anne Goodwyn Jones offers a penetrating deconstruction of gender in the southern literary renaissance, Charles Joyner reassesses William Styron’s controversial decision to write The Confessions of Nat Turner in the first person, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown reveals the connection between depression and literary creativity. Presenting interdisciplinary topics within a broad chronological range, this remarkable work will be of interest to all students of southern literature and history.
Selecting journals that speak for a very large number of topics addressed by the conservative press, this volume profiles selected conservative journals published since 1787. The conservative press has scarcely spoken with a single voice, whether the topics treated or even the time inhabited are the same or different. Yet, these journals testify to the persistent vigor and importance of conservatism. Together they provide a focused survey of the history of American conservative thought from the late 18th Century to the late 19th Century. Along with the companion volume covering the 20th Century conservative press, the book provides an important resource on conservative thought in America. Despite the disparities in conservative intellectual thought, the journals covered, even the more idiosyncratic and extreme, are connected by their core values of conservatism. The book is organized into sections reflecting these connections. The first section covers journals associated with Federal, Whig, or, in the Civil War era, Northern Democratic political interests. A later section includes journals sharing an attachment to Southern conservative values during the antebellum and Reconstruction periods. Two sections deal, respectively, with 19th Century Orthodox Protestant periodicals and 19th Century Catholic and Episcopal journals, and yet another section discusses journals united by a major focus on literary topics and cultural connections.
Prior to the twenty-first century, most historical writing about women in South Carolina focused on elite White women, even though working-class women of diverse backgrounds were actively engaged in the social, economic, and political battles of the state. Although often unrecognized publicly, they influenced cultural and political landscapes both within and outside of the state's borders through their careers, writing, art, music, and activism. Despite significant cultural, social, and political barriers, these brave and determined women affected sweeping change that advanced the position of women as well as their communities. The entries in 101 Women Who Shaped South Carolina, which include many from the landmark text The South Carolina Encyclopedia, offer a concise and approachable history of the state, while recognizing the sacrifice, persistence, and sheer grit of its heroines and history makers. A foreword is provided by Walter Edgar, Neuffer Professor of Southern Studies Emeritus and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina.
Documenting the difficult class relations between women slaveholders and slave women, this study shows how class and race as well as gender shaped women's experiences and determined their identities. Drawing upon massive research in diaries, letters, memoirs, and oral histories, the author argues that the lives of antebellum southern women, enslaved and free, differed fundamentally from those of northern women and that it is not possible to understand antebellum southern women by applying models derived from New England sources.
