In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • De Bow’s Review: The Antebellum Vision of a New South by John F. Kvach
  • William D. Carrigan
De Bow’s Review: The Antebellum Vision of a New South. John F. Kvach. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-8131-4420-7, 280 pp., cloth, $50.00.

In January 1846, J. D. B. De Bow, a South Carolinian recently moved to New Orleans, published the first issue of a periodical that would later be simply known as De Bow’s Review. Compiling statistics and explaining to his audience the latest developments in agriculture and commerce, De Bow argued for the expansion and modernization of the southern economy, including industrialization. He was also a fierce advocate of slavery and southern rights and, eventually, a zealous advocate of secession. He held a deep sway over southern leaders and possessed a national reputation, heading the U.S. Census for four years. Despite his influence and the wide citation of his writings by historians over the last half-century, De Bow has remained a relatively understudied figure. Helping to fill this important gap is John Kvach’s new study of De Bow, his Review, and his readers. It is a most welcome and important contribution to the historical literature on the nineteenth-century South.

Kvach gives several reasons why later generations have not fully appreciated De Bow. First, his complex and dynamic vision of a changing South did not fit with postwar efforts to paint the Old South in nostalgic terms as a frozen and unchanging world of chivalry and conservative values that was “gone with the wind” after the Civil War. Second, historians have not studied De Bow’s readership systematically and have thus not fully appreciated his role in helping to create and shape a network of globally connected and profit-minded planters, merchants, and factory owners. Third, historians have had a hard time balancing their assessment of De Bow, given his inflammatory advocacy of the South, slavery, and the Confederacy. Kvach argues that “De Bow’s true historical legacy likely belongs somewhere between his positive traits as an information broker and his negative qualities as a regional sycophant who manipulated southerners” (4).

Kvach’s volume is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 describes the first twenty-five years of De Bow’s life in Charleston. Historians of the South will not be surprised by De Bow’s South Carolina roots, something so many of the most influential antebellum southern intellectuals shared. The second chapter discusses De Bow’s decision to relocate to New Orleans to be nearer the center of southern expansion. Kvach notes that, influenced by John C. Calhoun, De Bow was very much both pro-national and pro-southern as he initiated publication of his journal. In chapter 3, Kvach charts De Bow’s growing success and his reputation for using statistics and data, which eventually earned him a position as the head of the U.S. Census. In the early years of publication, he often emphasized [End Page 178] the ability of slavery and free labor to coexist. Chapter 4 charts De Bow’s embrace of a more reactionary defense of the South, inspired in large part by the Kansas crisis. He became a propagandist for secession and slavery and utilized his skill with information and statistics to manipulate fear and anger among his readers.

Chapter 5 is probably the most original and important chapter in the volume. Here, Kvach analyzes the readers of De Bow’s Review from a database of 1496 individuals he heroically reconstructed from a diverse set of sources scattered across the archives and libraries of the South. While some of the results are not surprising, others are revealing about the mind of the South. His data is included in a wonderful appendix, making the volume a must-purchase for any library that caters to researchers of the antebellum South.

In the final two chapters, Kvach demonstrates how the war tested and ultimately shattered many of De Bow’s ideas and then how De Bow emerged from war, recommitted to his earlier ideals of southern commercial and industrial progress in partnership with the North. His death in 1867, in his...

pdf

Share