J. D. B. De Bow is most often remembered as the founder and editor of De Bow's Review, a leading platform for proslavery and pro-Southern opinion in antebellum America. Yet, his magazine was more than that: it was an advocate of economic reform in the South in the face of a rapidly changing national economic order. While defending the efficacy of plantation society generally and slavery specifically, De Bow advocated unprecedented public investment in the commercial infrastructure of the region. He argued that such investments were necessary if Southerners were to avert subjection to Northern interests, as was then developing, and return the region to its historic national dominance. The pages of his monthly were a compendium of statistics and articles intended as lessons in political economy for all those who had yet to realize the plight of the South. Thus De Bow's Review was not so much...