Louisa Susannah Cheves McCord (December 3, 1810 – November 23, 1879) was an American plantation owner and author from South Carolina, best known as a political essayist who wrote on Free Trade.

Between 1848 and 1856, she authored some thirteen essays and a play, Caius Gracchus, appeared in print, in which McCord articulated a defense of slavery as well as a conservative view of women's place in society.

[2] McCord was active as an author from the 1840s onward, and her production is regarded as an important contribution to Southern literature of the Antebellum era.

In October 1810 (the year of her birth), Langdon Cheves was elected from the Charleston Congressional District to Congress, where he took his seat in session with Lowndes, Williams and Calhoun, forming an integral factor of that group of Southern statesmen whose opinions express a distinct school of political purpose and constitutional interpretation in U.S. history.

In 1814, Clay was appointed to the Ghent Commission and in the vacancy created by his absence, Cheves was made Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, a position he held until 1816.

When she was nine years old, Langdon Cheves was called to adjust the financial difficulties of the United States Bank at Philadelphia.

[4] At this time, his two daughters, Louisa and Sophia, the latter of whom became Mrs. Charles Thompson Haskell, were sent to the school of a Mr. Grimshaw, an Irishman then living in Philadelphia.

It had not been her father's intention to educate his daughters in any other way than that usually given women in that day—a lighter academic course, with a "finishing school" for French, astronomy, and so forth.

In her father's study and at his table she met and heard the discourse of men whose speech expressed national policies, whose style, both in written and in spoken English, is classic.

[3][4] As a young woman, Louisa Cheves came into the possession of Lang Syne Plantation, formerly belonging to a great-aunt, Mrs. Lovell, a daughter of Colonel William Heatley.

"Lang Syne" was in St. Matthew's parish, on the Congaree River near Fort Motte, South Carolina, about 30 miles (48 km) from Columbia.

[3] In the year 1848, McCord published her first book of poetry, My Dreams, a collection of fugitive poems from the press of Carey & Hart, Philadelphia.

[6][8] A close study of these poems reveals a genuine poetic talent, but there is not the certainty of maturity, nor the metrical perfection of first-rate poetry.

The play was probably never intended for the stage; it belongs to that class of classic closet dramas that were in vogue in the first half of the 19th century.

Caius is heroic and his young wife is as winsome as a Roman girl could well be; the mob in its vacillations is accurately drawn, and Cornelia is a masterpiece.

In the editorial reminiscences secured and edited by Benjamin Blake Minor, one-time editor of the Messenger, McCord's name is not mentioned.

In 1848, George P. Putnam, of New York, published her Translation of Bastiat's Sophisms of the Protective Policy, with an introductory letter by Dr. Francis Lieber, professor of political philosophy and economy in South Carolina College.

[3] Her contributions on this subject to the Southern Quarterly Review included "Justice and Fraternity" in July 1849; "The Right to Labour" in October 1849; and "Diversity of Races, its Bearing upon Negro Slavery" in April 1851.

The writers who cut the fresh pages of the Southern Quarterly Review at that time read with relish McCord's convincing and cleverly-arranged arguments in support of their position.

Her vision was of a great Southern confederacy in which the culture of classical learning would continue to flourish, in which an economic independence would be maintained through the cotton industry, in which the Afro-American would be most comfortable and happy in a state of slavery, and in which the white master, with his labor question settled, would be furnished the leisure requisite for the pursuit of science and art.

[3] In discussing the Woman's Rights movement, she replied to a proposition of an English review, that "a reason must be given why anything should be permitted to one person and interdicted to another."

The first-named organization made the uniforms for the company of her son, Captain L. Cheves McCord, his mother furnishing the material.

In 1862, 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, and here she gave her greatest service.

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, from which officers' gloves were knitted.

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.

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.

[3] After the war, McCord left South Carolina for a time, going to Charlottesville, Virginia, and thence further to Canada —to Coburg and other points.

The latter years of McCord's life were spent in Charleston, in the home of her son-in-law, Major Augustine T. Smythe, and his wife, her daughter Louisa.

[3] In the spring of 1879, the unveiling of the Confederate monument took place at Columbia, her little granddaughter, Cheves McCord, actively participating in the ceremony.