J. D. B. De Bow

James Dunwoody Brownson DeBow (July 20, 1820 – February 27, 1867) was an American publisher and statistician, best known for his influential magazine DeBow's Review, who also served as head of the U.S. Census from 1853–1857.

J.D.B. DeBow was born on July 20, 1820 in Charleston, South Carolina, the second son of Mary Bridget Norton and Garret DeBow. James' father, Garret, was born in New York City, New York about 1775 to a Dutch-Huguenot father who immigrated to the United States in the early 17th century. His mother, Mary Bridget, was born into an elite planter family from South Carolina. Her grandfather was Capt. John Norton, an early settler on the Carolina Coast. Her father, William, was a Revolutionary Soldier.

A resident of New Orleans, DeBow used his magazine to advocate the expansion of southern agriculture and commerce so that the southern economy could become independent of the North. He warned constantly of the South's "colonial" relationship with the North, one in which the South was at a distinct disadvantage.

DeBow became nationally known for an editorial he penned about the status of the territory obtained from the Mexican Cession of 1848. He claimed that the federal Union could collapse once the North's number of representatives exceeded those of the southern states in the United States House of Representatives. Moreover, one additional free state at the time would have tipped the balance in the United States Senate to the North, which had the large majority of the population.

DeBow hence proposed a legislative compromise to guarantee southern rights in a northern-majority Union. U.S. Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky took up the cause and cemented together a five-part Compromise of 1850, which permitted the admission of California into the Union as a free state. However, southerners were given a concession: a stronger Fugitive Slave Law contrary to the Constitution. DeBow later opposed the fugitive slave measure on the grounds that runaway slaves could likely gain freedom in the North from sympathetic anti-slavery juries for reasons including that slavery was unconstitutional and/or that no laws authorized slavery.

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