page_title: Louisa Susannah Cheves McCord
section_title: Service to the Confederacy
hierarchical_section_title: Louisa Susannah Cheves McCord / Activist / Service to the Confederacy
caption_attribution_description: English: McCord House This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 79003357 More images
context_page_description: Louisa Susannah Cheves McCord, was an American author from South Carolina, best known as a political essayist. McCord, the daughter of Langdon Cheves, was born in 1810, in South Carolina. She was educated in Philadelphia. In 1840, she married David James McCord, becoming a widow in 1855. She mainly resided in Columbia, South Carolina.
  She was active as an author from the 1840s onward, and her production is regarded as an important contribution of Southern Antebellum literature. McCord's writings consisted principally of essays and reviews, and she wrote well on the subject of political economy. Her published volumes included, My Dreams, a volume of poems, published in Philadelphia in 1848; Sophisms of the Protective Policy. A translation from the French of Bastiat, published in New York. 1848; Caius Gracchus. A five-act tragedy, published in New York, 1851. McCord was a contributor to the "Southern Quarterly Review," and the "Southern Literary Messenger," for a number of years from 1849. Her poetry was simple and clearly uttered.
context_section_description: Early in the summer of 1861 the Soldiers' Relief Association was organized, with McCord as president. In July 1861, she was made president of the Ladies' Clothing Association. The first-named organization made the uniforms for the company of her son, Captain L. Cheves McCord, his mother furnishing the material. She resigned her presidency of the Soldiers' Relief Association in order to give her whole time to the military hospital established within the South Carolina College; this was in 1862, and here she gave her greatest service. In her home, at the northwest corner of Pendleton and Bull streets, across the street from the college property, she received supplies from the women of the city -— supplies available for nourishment for the sick, and hospital comfort. Early every day, there was made in her kitchen a supply of corn bread and broth, heaped into plates and left on a long dresser on her back piazza, served day after day as the nourishment for wounded soldiers who could drag themselves across the street from the convalescent building on the campus.
  All her carpets were cut into blankets. All wool mattresses were ripped up and their contents spun into yarn for soldiers' socks. Even the hair of rabbits killed on the plantation was saved, and, when combined with a little wool and the ravelings of old black silk scraps, made a gray yarn, of which officers' gloves were knitted. All of the lead from her houses —even the lead pipes from an elaborate system of waterworks on her plantation— was sent to be melted into bullets. Before the end of the war, all her horses had gone into the army.
  In the midst of all this activity there came from second Manassas the news that her son, Cheves McCord, had died. On the morning of February 17, 1865, McCord was warned about the invasion of her city. During the occupation of the city by Sherman, McCord remained in her own home, though the house, such part as was not reserved for her use, was occupied by General Howard and his staff as headquarters. When General Howard left, a guard was set before the premises "to protect it," which guard promptly set work to pillage the house, though a young officer gave some protection. Her two daughters had been sent to the hospital by her previous to Sherman's entrance to the town in the hope of greater protection for them under the hospital's flag during the turmoil. McCord lived long enough to see reconstruction. However, when, in 1869, the suggestion was made that a monument be erected to the Confederate soldier, it was to McCord that the women of the State at once turned for leadership. She was made the first president of the association, and in this capacity, she organized the first efforts of Columbia women to perpetuate the memory of the Confederate soldier.
caption: Front elevation of the McCord House, built 1849
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