{{short description|Widely -circulated 19th-century magazine}} {{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}} {{Infobox newspaper | name = DeBow's Review | logo = | image = De Bows Review from 1857 (146665459).jpg | caption = | type = | format = | owners = | founder = [[J. D. B. De Bow]] | publisher = | editor = | chief_editor = | associate_editor = | managing_editor = | news_editor = | campus_editor = | campus_chief = | opinion_editor = | photo_editor = | seniorstaff = | staff_writers = | founded = 1846 | political_position = | language = English | ceased_publication = 1884 | relaunched = | headquarters = | circulation = | sister_newspapers = | ISSN = | oclc = | website = }} '''''De Bow's Review''''' was a widely-circulated magazine<ref name="EuDeB"> "DEBOW'S REVIEW" (publication titles/dates/locations/notes), APS II, Reels 382 & 383, webpage: [http://www.eureka.edu/emp/jrodrig/webpage/debows.htm Eu-DeBows]. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050220143607/http://www.eureka.edu/emp/jrodrig/webpage/debows.htm |date=February 20, 2005 }}</ref>{{page needed|date=April 2021}} of "agricultural, commercial, and industrial progress and resource" in the [[American South]] during the mid-19th century, from 1846 to 1884.<ref name=EuDeB/> Before the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], the magazine "recommended the best practices for wringing profits from slaves."<ref>{{cite magazine|title=The Case for Reparations|first=Ta-Nehisi|last=Coates|author-link= Ta-Nehisi Coates|magazine=[[The Atlantic]]|date=June 2014|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/|page=64}}</ref> It bore the name of its first editor, [[James Dunwoody Brownson De Bow]] (J. D. B. De Bow, 1820–1867), who wrote much of the early issues, but there were various writers over the years (''see below: [[#Contributors|Contributors]]''). R. G. Barnwell and Edwin Q. Bell, of Charleston, appeared as editors in March 1867, after DeBow's death,<ref name="GBDict"> ''A Dictionary of Books Relating to America, from Its Discovery'', 1873, [[Joseph Sabin]], [[Wilberforce Eames]], Bibliographical Society of America, Robert William Glenroie Vail; p.291, at Google Books, 2008, webpage: [https://books.google.com/books?id=EKoFAAAAQAAJ&dq=%22rg+barnwell%22&pg=PA291 Books-Google-Dictionary-of-Books]. </ref> and W. M. Burwell was editor from March 1868 to December 1879.<ref name=EuDeB/>
==Publication history== This magazine was often published monthly, with several interruptions, from January 1846 until June 1880,<ref name=EuDeB/>{{full citation needed|date=April 2021}} and then changed up through 1884.<ref name=EuDeB/>{{page needed|date=April 2021}} The magazine's publication was disrupted during the [[American Civil War]] after August 1864 but resumed in January 1866. After 1880, the magazine underwent a number of name revisions, and in 1884,<ref name=EuDeB/>{{full citation needed|date=April 2021}} it was either renamed to or absorbed by the ''Agricultural Review and Industrial Monthly'' of New York.<ref name=EuDeB/>{{page needed|date=April 2021}} (De Bow himself had died in 1867).
De Bow began this magazine in [[New Orleans]] in January 1846 as the ''Commercial Review of the South and West''.<ref name=EuDeB/>{{page needed|date=April 2021}} It was published in [[New Orleans]] almost every year, except 1865, It was disrupted and 1864, when it was based in [[Columbia, South Carolina]].<ref name=EuDeB/> He also published it in other cities as well: in [[Washington, DC]], between 1853 and 1857 (during his tenure as Head of the [[US Census]]), continuing until 1860,<ref name=EuDeB/>{{full citation needed|date=April 2021}} and then in [[Charleston, South Carolina]] from 1861 to 1862. By the start of the Civil War, it was the most widely-circulated southern periodical. De Bow wrote much of each issue himself.
These were the editors of ''De Bow's Review'':<ref name=EuDeB/> from January 1846 to February 1867, J. D. B. De Bow; from April 1867 to February 1868, R. G. Barnwell and E. Q. Bell; from March 1868 to December 1879, W. M. Burwell. ''DeBow's Review'' was published in New Orleans, 1846–1852; then New Orleans and Washington, DC, 1853–1860; New Orleans and Charleston, South Carolina, 1861–1862; only Columbia, South Carolina, in 1864; then again in New Orleans, 1866–1880.<ref name=EuDeB/>{{full citation needed|date=April 2021}}
==Content== Prior to the [[American Civil War]] (1861–1865), 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 [[secession]]ist perspective in the late 1850s and the early 1860s.<ref name=EuDeB/>{{full citation needed|date=April 2021}} It defended [[slavery]] in response to [[Abolitionism in the United States|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.<ref name=EuDeB/>{{full citation needed|date=April 2021}}
After the war, the magazine resumed publication on commercial, political, and cultural topics; urged acceptance of the [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]] program of the Union under President [[Andrew Johnson]];<ref name=EuDeB/> and even printed articles from former abolitionists. {{Expand section|date=June 2008}}
==Contributors== ''DeBow's Review'' was known for several famous historical figures, both esteemed and controversial, who published material in the magazine: {| style="width:420px;" |- |align=top| * [[Judah P. Benjamin]] * [[James Dunwoody Brownson DeBow|J. D. B. DeBow]] (editor) * [[George Fitzhugh]] * [[James H. Hammond]] * [[Thomas Prentice Kettell]] * [[Francis Lieber]] |align=top| * [[Matthew Fontaine Maury]] * [[Albert Pike]] * [[Edmund Ruffin]] * [[William Gilmore Simms]] * [[Lysander Spooner]] * [[William Henry Trescot]] |} Other contributors from 1847 to 1867 included [[R. G. Barnwell]], [[Edwin Q. Bell]], and [[William MacCreary Burwell]].<ref name=EuDeB/><ref name="GBooks"> ''Debow's Review, Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial Progress'', Google Books, 1847, webpage: [https://books.google.com/books?id=UicKAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22Debow's%22+1839+fire+Mobile&pg=PT1 Books-Google-Debow's-PPT1]. </ref>{{full citation needed|date=April 2021}}
==References== {{reflist}}
==Further reading== * Fuhlhage, Michael. "The Mexican Image through Southern Eyes: De Bow's Review in the Era of Manifest Destiny." ''American Journalism'' 30.2 (2013): 182–209. * Kvach, John F. ''De Bow's Review: The Antebellum Vision of a New South.'' Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2013.
===Primary sources=== * Paskoff, Paul F., and Daniel J. Wilson, eds. ''The Cause of the South: Selections from De Bow's Review, 1846-1867'' (LSU Press, 1982)
==Index== * {{cite journal |title=A collation of De Bow's review, giving the date, the numbering, and the title of each issue and volume, from 1846 to 1880 |first=Selma |last=Nachman |journal=Bulletin of the [[Bibliographical Society of America]] |volume=4 |number=1–2 |date=January–April 1912 |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006275568 |pages=27–32|doi=10.1086/bullbiblsociamer.4.1_2.24306442 |url-access=subscription }}
==External links== * [http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/browse.journals/debo.html Complete text 1846-1869] * [http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/proslav/debowshp.html University of Virginia - selected articles] * [https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/browse.journals/debo.html Making of America] * HathiTrust. [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008923645 De Bow's Review] * [https://fair-use.org/debows-review/1850/09/slavery-and-the-bible "Slavery and the Bible"] (September 1850).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Debow's Review}} [[Category:Defunct agricultural magazines published in the United States]] [[Category:Magazines established in 1846]] [[Category:Magazines disestablished in 1898]] [[Category:1846 establishments in the United States]] [[Category:Magazines published in New Orleans]] [[Category:Magazines published in South Carolina]] [[Category:Mass media in Columbia, South Carolina]]