ABSTRACT
Louisa S. McCord forthright defense of Southern slavery makes the most startling reading. In her view slavery was indeed prerequisite for civilized white society. It was also best for the enslaved. She responded tirelessly to slavery's opponents, both in print and in private correspondence, accusing them of ignorance and of condemning slavery "from theory, not insight". In her own case, incidentally, McCord's claim that slavery put masters under obligation seems genuine enough. When her father's estate was being settled, she begged not to be given any slaves, as she already had enough to care for. McCord's views on the Woman Question were of a piece with her position on slavery. Like Frederick Douglass and the Grimké sisters, she saw an analogy between the position of women and that of slaves. Unlike those abolitionists, however, she defended the existing distinctions, arguing that they were both inevitable and valuable.
