DeBow's Review

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DeBow's Review was a widely circulated magazine of "agricultural, commercial, and industrial progress and resource" in the American South during the middle of the 19th century. It bore the name of its first editor, James Dunwoody Brownson DeBow.

1 Publication history
2 Content
3 Contributors
4 External links

[edit] Publication history

The magazine was published from 1846 until 1884. The magazine's publication was disrupted during the American Civil War after August of 1864 but resumed publication again in January of 1866. After 1880, it underwent a number of name revisions, and in 1884 it was either renamed to or absorbed by the Agricultural Review and Industrial Monthly. (DeBow himself died in 1867).

DeBow began this magazine in New Orleans in 1846 as the Commercial Review of the South and West. He moved it to Washington, D.C., between 1853 and 1857 (during his tenure as Head of the U.S. Census). By the start of the Civil War it was the most widely circulated southern periodical. DeBow wrote much of each issue himself.

[edit] Content

Before the Civil War the journal contained everything from agricultural reports, statistical data, and economic analysis to literature, political opinion. and commentary. The magazine took an increasingly pro-Southern and eventually secessionist perspective in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The magazine defended slavery in response to abolitionism, published an article in the 1850s that urged the South to resume the African slave trade, and advocated southern nationalism as the Civil War approached. After the war, the magazine resumed publication on commercial, political, and cultural topics and even printed articles from former abolitionists.