New Directions in Southern History

The Antebellum Vision of a New South

John F. Kvach

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780813144214
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In the decades preceding the Civil War, the South struggled against widespread negative characterizations of its economy and society as it worked to match the North's infrastructure and level of development. Recognizing the need for regional reform, James Dunwoody Brownson (J. D. B.) De Bow began to publish a monthly journal -- De Bow's Review -- to guide Southerners toward a stronger, more diversified future. His periodical soon became a primary reference for planters and entrepreneurs in the Old South, promoting urban development and industrialization and advocating investment in schools, libraries, and other cultural resources. Later, however, De Bow began to use his journal to manipulate his readers' political views. Through inflammatory articles, he defended proslavery ideology, encouraged Southern nationalism, and promoted anti-Union sentiment, eventually becoming one of the South's most notorious fire-eaters.

In De Bow's Review: The Antebellum Vision of a New South, author John Kvach explores how the editor's antebellum economic and social policies influenced Southern readers and created the framework for a postwar New South movement. By recreating subscription lists and examining the lives and livelihoods of 1,500 Review readers, Kvach demonstrates how De Bow's Review influenced a generation and a half of Southerners. This approach allows modern readers to understand the historical context of De Bow's editorial legacy. Ultimately, De Bow and his antebellum subscribers altered the future of their region by creating the vision of a New South long before the Civil War.

1

Learning to Be Southern and American

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Charleston, South Carolina, stood ready to claim its position alongside New York, Boston, and Philadelphia as one of the great American cities. Since the earliest settlers had founded the small port village on a marshy peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers in 1670, subsequent generations of Charlestonians had invested capital and labor in their city's economic, social, and cultural development. Wealthy planters and merchants considered the city an important South Atlantic commercial hub in the lucrative triangular trade that developed among North America, Europe, and Africa. Although rice, indigo, and later cotton became the economic foundation of Charleston's export market, slave traders made the city uniquely profitable along the Atlantic coast of the American colonies. Ship captains off-loaded their human cargo and refilled their ships’ holds with agricultural products and naval stores bound for Europe. By the time of the American Revolution, city planners had built a sophisticated sewer and drainage system, laid brick sidewalks, and installed gas streetlights despite the loss of commerce during the war. Profit-minded community leaders hoped that these aesthetic and practical amenities might attract new residents and businesses that would add vibrancy to the city. Ambitious planters, slave traders, and merchants benefited from established trade routes and community development, and by 1800 Charleston had grown to become the fifth largest city in the United States. Shipyards, sawmills, grist and rice mills, sugar-refining houses, wagon and wheelwright shops, a rope factory, a barrel factory, an iron foundry, and South Carolina's first textile mill augmented Charleston's thriving commercial sector and employed fifteen hundred workers by the early nineteenth century. Wealthy city residents built lavish single-family homes along the waterfront and constructed elaborate gardens to mark their success. They also invested in cultural institutions such as the Charleston Library Society, the St. Cecelia Music Society, and the College of Charleston. And even though, like most of the United States, the city suffered during the War of 1812, it enjoyed prosperity in the postwar years. Sophisticated Charlestonians eagerly anticipated better days as their city became a global center of commerce and culture in the new republic.¹

Few observers could have predicted Charleston's sudden economic collapse in 1819. The city had developed into a significant commercial center for the state's low-country planters, upcountry farmers, and merchants. The growth of towns along the fall line that separated South Carolina's coastal and piedmont regions made Charleston an important commercial and financial center. Despite growing competition from nearby cities such as Savannah and regional commercial centers such as Baltimore, Charleston's port remained profitable as high cotton prices and a steady supply of upcountry short staple cotton flowed to the city. Moreover, in 1818 the price of cotton had peaked at just over thirty cents a pound; European demand for southern agricultural commodities had steadily increased since the War of 1812 and brought economic prosperity to much of the United States. The “Era of Good Feelings” had been good to the merchants of Charleston. But unchecked financial speculation and the sudden collapse of European money markets initiated a global economic panic that devastated the American economy. Banks called in loans to remain solvent, escalating the crisis. The lack of hard currency made it difficult for many Americans to pay their debts. And in Charleston the price of cotton dropped to below seventeen cents a pound in 1820 and would continue to fall throughout the decade, averaging nine cents a pound between 1826 and 1832.²

The Panic of 1819 damaged the economic foundation of Charleston as stricken planters grew more rice and cotton to compensate for losses but instead flooded the market and lowered prices. Moreover, it created an alarming citywide exodus of residents hoping to escape financial embarrassment and find new opportunities in South Carolina's upcountry and newly opened land in the western territories of the United States. Between 1819 and 1830 more than sixty-nine thousand state residents moved away from South Carolina. Fiscal mistakes and budding rivalries extended the financial depression of the city. Charleston's merchants watched as export revenues dropped from $11 million in 1816 to just under $7.5 million in 1826 and as import revenues decreased from $1.4 million in 1815 to $511,852 in 1821. The Panic hit American cities especially hard, cutting the incomes of consumers and producers alike. Yet many merchants continued to purchase the same volume of imported merchandise without adjusting to the decrease in consumer spending. And Charleston was not the only city to suffer; the Panic hit other American urban areas just as hard, cutting the incomes of consumers and producers alike. The development of new commercial rivalries also hindered Charleston's economic recovery after 1819. The advent of the steamboat and the construction of new roads and canals shifted existing trade routes away from the city. Merchants in Camden, Columbia, and Hamburg, South Carolina, and Augusta and Savannah, Georgia, challenged Charleston's commercial primacy along the South Atlantic seaboard. The commercial success of Savannah concerned Charlestonians, who worried about losing upcountry trade to Georgian merchants. These commercial rivalries would continue to intensify until the Civil War, threatening the economic future of Charleston. The city had started its long decline toward economic marginalization, cultural isolation, and sectional discord.³

The growing political debate over slavery in the United States also limited the collective position of Charleston. Missouri's pending statehood in 1819 ignited discussions over the spread of slavery into western territories, and the ensuing crisis further isolated Charleston from the rest of the nation. Although American sectionalism had existed since the 1770s, the regional debate over Missouri's admission into the Union as a free state or a slave state heightened tension between the North and the South. By 1819 enough northern congressional support existed to challenge the presumption that slavery would become an uncontested part of Missouri statehood. The ensuing debate over Missouri created national anxiety and brought forth murmurs of secession among ardent southern rights advocates. William Smith, a US senator from South Carolina, created the foundation for future proslavery ideologues by arguing that slavery served as a positive good for blacks and whites. Charles Pinckney, a native Charlestonian and signer of the US Constitution, became a leading congressional opponent of any compromise that would restrict the western spread of slavery. In a speech to the House of Representatives in 1820, Pinckney defended slavery and worried about the economic implications for Charleston if any limits on slavery became law. He warned that an eventual civil war would occur if northern politicians continued to agitate against the South's “peculiar institution.” Both men's roles in the congressional debates magnified South Carolina's extreme position in the crisis. Pinckney's unmatched intensity set a clear precedent for future sectional disputes over slavery, southern nationalism, and secession. Having served his state and region, the old politician retired to his Charleston mansion to a hero's welcome after Henry Clay's Missouri Compromise seemingly settled the debate in 1821 by prohibiting slavery in most of the unorganized territory obtained from the Louisiana Purchase.⁴

While much of the nation focused on the devastating effects of the Panic of 1819 and the congressional debates over Missouri's entrance into the United States, Charleston residents Garret and Mary Bridget De Bow had more immediate concerns in the summer of 1820. The young couple—Garret, a New York–born descendant of Dutch Huguenots, and Mary, the daughter of a prominent low-country family—had just welcomed James Dunwoody Brownson (J. D. B.) De Bow, their second son, into their family on July 20, 1820. Garret was already struggling to maintain the family grocery store along downtown State Street following the Panic. The birth of James stretched an already tight family budget. Although sectional interests and financial difficulties began pushing the nation apart in 1820, the De Bow family pulled closer together during those difficult times. Garret and Mary raised James in a regionally blended house that valued their respective cultures. It was from this mixture of northern and southern backgrounds and interests that J. D. B. De Bow emerged.⁵

Little is known about Garret De Bow's business career or personal life in Charleston. His father's family had left Amsterdam in the early seventeenth century and moved to New York City. His grandfather, John De Bow, worked as a cordwainer and later married Mary Ellsworth. On May 9, 1774, John and Mary's son Garret was born, before the family moved to New Jersey in the early 1770s. De Bow later served in the New Jersey state militia during the American Revolution. Garret grew up surrounded by a large extended family in New York and New Jersey. Despite his comfortable family situation, however, he eventually decided to move to South Carolina and establish himself in Charleston. Like many Americans in the early republic, he hoped to find new opportunities that would allow him to thrive away from the constraints of family and more familiar surroundings.⁶

Mary Bridget Norton was a family member of South Carolina's planter elite, and her background differed greatly from that of her future husband. Her great-grandfather, John Norton, had been an original settler along South Carolina's Atlantic coast. He purchased 400 acres on St. Helena Island and another 560 acres on what would later become known as Warsaw Island. Norton's death in 1705 meant that his property would be split into nine equal shares and divided among family members. Mary Bridget's grandfather Jonathan inherited land on the southern tip of St. Helena Island and later, in August 1756, deeded two acres for the construction of a chapel and vestry. His son, and Mary Bridget's father, William Norton, continued to farm the family land and live on the isolated island situated between Charleston and Savannah. Mary Bridget, like her future husband, hoped for a more exciting life and often visited Charleston. It was during one of these visits that the two met, and on December 4, 1802, the Charleston Times noted that Garret De Bow had married Mary Bridget Norton.⁷

As if economic collapse and political turmoil were not enough to absorb, Denmark Vesey's rumored slave revolt in July 1822 created further hysteria among white Charlestonians. The possibility of more large-scale slave revolts fueled white concerns in a city with the largest urban black population in the nation. The potential for bloodshed led to new slave codes restricting the movement of all blacks, slave and free, in the city. The subsequent arrival of abolitionist reading material at the city post office solidified white suspicions of racial unrest and northern agitation. White Charlestonians’ fears caused them to shut their city off from outside influences. The once cosmopolitan city became insular and defensive. Vesey's motives and white reactions created an environment that allowed Charleston to pull further away from rational national debates over slavery and became the basis for South Carolina's hypersensitive response to any perceived threat from the North. Although too young to remember the Panic of 1819, the Missouri Crisis, or Denmark Vesey's failed revolt, James grew up in a city heavily influenced by all three events. As the future editor of De Bow's Review, he grew up with a keen sense of being southern and learning how to balance those feelings with being an American. An acute sectional division had started at the time of his birth, and, like the South, De Bow would slowly move toward extremist viewpoints as the North continued to attack slavery and the South's distinctive way of life. He, like his nation, struggled with growing divisions created by internal feelings regarding what it meant to be northern and southern.⁸

The De Bow family initially lived a chaotic life of ever-changing jobs and homes, struggling to find their place in Charleston. In 1807 Garret De Bow was a grocer at 68 East Bay Street, but by 1809 he had become a vendue master, or auctioneer, who lived at 7 East Bay Street. In the following years the family moved from Archdale Street and then back to East Bay Street, before opening a shop at 53 State Street and living at 12 Amen Street. Business prosperity brought newfound luxuries, and by 1820 the De Bows owned three slaves. Yet short-lived success failed to protect the family from outside pressures created by the financial panic; by the early 1820s Garret De Bow had lost his grocery store and declared bankruptcy. Financially ruined, and personally devastated by failure, he tried to regain his business but never rekindled past achievements. On July 14, 1826, Garret died of dyspepsia at age fifty-one, leaving his wife and four children without a provider.⁹

Despite the loss of his father and the economic and sectional turmoil that surrounded him, James De Bow fondly recalled his childhood in overly romantic tones—teasing neighborhood girls, stealing grapes from neighbors, engaging in “fisty wars” with local boys, and enjoying “old Christmas” with his family. As an adult he remembered taking steamboat rides to visit family and friends in nearby Beaufort and Bay Point, South Carolina, and reminisced about his “beautiful past—the youth of hope and joy…the light of other days.” Years after leaving Charleston, De Bow yearned to “stand again by the banks of the Ashley and the Cooper [Rivers], or hear the waves beating up against the beach of old Sullivan's.” In an introspective article for De Bow's Review in March 1850, he nostalgically noted that these memories held “everything of life and warmth” for him. He also recalled less flattering memories of a city that had patches of grass growing on previously busy commercial streets, a memory that shaped his later views on commercial progress and civic boosterism in the South.¹⁰

De Bow's private memories often contradicted his idyllic public musings. In a private journal that he sporadically kept during his childhood, he recorded his personal feelings as they related to his life. His father's death forced him to assume many family responsibilities, and by age ten he had taken a job as a clerk selling liquor at E. and J. B. Delano and Company on East Bay Street. Most of his days consisted of long stretches of inactivity and boredom separated by stocking shelves, helping customers, and taking inventory. He yearned for excitement in his life and grew despondent and restless for change. De Bow lapsed into lengthy periods of depression brought on by the slightest inconvenience or setback. He attempted to lift his spirits by attending parties and dances, taking horseback rides, walking along Charleston's Battery, and swimming in a nearby millpond. At one party he unintentionally insulted a man who took offense and challenged him to duel on the spot. He declined, offering that he “would not disgrace [himself] so much” as to fight at a public gathering but agreed to meet the man later in the evening at a more secluded spot. As De Bow returned to the party, the young man hit him from behind, and a fight broke out. He left the party and returned home after realizing the man had more friends in attendance. Although these activities made life tolerable, he confided in his diary that he suffered from “the want of employment for the body and mind.”¹¹

There was, however, one escape that offered De Bow respite from his low moods: the downtown Apprentices’ Library Society. Charleston's elite had founded and supported a variety of intellectual and cultural institutions by the 1820s, but these institutions often avoided true intellectual debates and instead maintained a nonconfrontational approach that became known as the “Charleston style.” This style mirrored the growing political and social homogenization of South Carolina, especially after the Nullification Crisis. Unlike the older, more gentlemanly Charleston Library Society, the Apprentices’ Library Society aided young middle- and lower-class men who hoped to improve their lives through practical training and education. The library became De Bow's private refuge from boredom and work. His personal determination to learn and seek answers allowed him to overcome the hindrance of not attending a formal school as a child. In one summer he read Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, Edward B. Lytton's Rienzi and Last Days of Pompeii, Barbara Hofland's The Maid of Moscow, William Wirt's Life and Character of Patrick Henry, Charles Rollin's Ancient Histories, and numerous newspapers and periodicals. He attended public lectures as an additional outlet for his growing inquisitiveness and pushed for answers to questions that arose in his mind. These intellectual activities drove him to think about writing, and he studied Parker's Exercises of Grammar and Composition to become a better writer. He began to see his city as a writer and hoped to use his newfound interests to aid the development of Charleston.¹²

De Bow witnessed the creation of a southern nationalist movement in Charleston during the early 1830s as debates over slavery and sectionalism continued to plague South Carolina and the United States. Spurred on by what many southerners felt were unfair tariff laws, South Carolinians such as John C. Calhoun, William C. Preston, and Thomas Cooper became leaders of a movement that sought to nullify federal tariffs and protect slavery from attacks by northern abolitionists. Many prominent Charleston merchants opposed these Nullifiers because they threatened the lifestyle that had been built through compromise and tradition. Yet the economic and political decline of the city could not be denied. Timothy Green, a traveler from New York who had previously lived in Charleston, lamented to a friend that the city “appeared to live upon the remnants of its former prosperity—the continued habits which had been formed in better days.” Aware of the growing dissatisfaction among southerners, Calhoun became interested in the right of nullification as a way for individual states to reject unjust federal laws. His threat of disunion over the tariffs of 1828 and 1832, and Andrew Jackson's swift presidential response to keep South Carolina in the Union, captured the nation's attention. The tariff debates and subsequent Nullification Crisis changed Calhoun's feelings about economic nationalism and made him a staunch supporter of states’ rights. In South Carolina, strong antitariff feelings fused with sectional tendencies and created a growing southern nationalist movement by the early 1830s. Although De Bow was a young boy during the crisis, his interest in southern nationalism and states’ rights fused with his lifelong reverence for Calhoun.¹³

Religion became an important part of De Bow's informal philosophical training as he searched for new interests that might lead to a career. He explored different ideas and never limited himself to one church; he often attended two services on Sunday and occasionally attended weekday services. He spent many evenings taking long walks in Charleston and visiting different churches. On June 12, 1836, De Bow attended a lecture by the Reverend Theodore Andrews at the Universalist Church and then walked down to St. Paul's Church to hear a Methodist sermon. After dinner he returned to the Universalist Church and listened to a sermon by the Reverend William Friske. Later that month, he attended another Friske sermon that focused on biblical passages dealing with fire and hell. He personally doubted that the world had been doomed to eternal damnation but enjoyed discussing the concept. Despite this early interest in religion, however, he never embraced a single denomination as his own.¹⁴

De Bow also spent considerable time exploring Charleston and noting in his short diary special events that interested him. In May 1836, he visited the city's medical college and saw some of the American victims of the “fiendish Santa Anna and his blood thirsty soldiers.” Later he went down to the waterfront to see a group of Charleston militia volunteers preparing for war in Florida. He attended a large dinner in their honor and noted that many of the soldiers got drunk and serenaded the city for much of the night. Overcome by feelings of national pride, he celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of American independence with a group of men who vowed “to spill every drop of blood in defense of their liberties.”¹⁵

In September 1836, personal tragedy once again befell De Bow when a cholera outbreak killed his ol...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: An Old Foundation for a New South
• 1. Learning to Be Southern and American
• 2. Leaving an Old South, Entering a New South
• 3. A Busy and Fractured Mind of the South
• 4. Embracing Southern Anger and Southern Nationalism
• 5. Reading and Investing in De Bow's Ideas
• 6. War Tests De Bow's Theories and Patience
• 7. The Reformulation of De Bow's Old New South
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: The Identified Readership of De Bow's Review
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index