The Cause of the South : Selections from DeBow's Review, 1846-1867

"A forum for the South the New Orleans-based periodical De Bow's Review was one of the best-known and most influential voices of southern interests, hopes, and fears. During the more than two decades of it existence, the Review established itself as an indispensable source of fact and articulate opinion in the South. In The Cause of the South, the authors have assembled a representative selection of articles from De Bow's Review that, taken together, provide a vivid portrait of the intellectual currents that ran through the South in the tense years leading to, during, and immediately following the Civil War. De Bow founded his journal to provide a forum for the South's unique agricultural and economic interests, but in the politically volatile decade of the 1850s it was not long before the magazine took up the issues and the cause of southern nationalism and proslavery apologetics. When the South firmly, but reluctantly, moved toward secession, the Review remained in the thick of the debate, ever watchful over the region's interests. The Cause of the South is the first volume to make readily available a cross section of the contents of De Bow's Review--thus revealing the range and the quality of southern thought during more than twenty years of constant concern over the region's future.