Today, we have magazines for all topics, including sports, business, fashion and music. One can even subscribe to a magazine about porta-potties! Magazines existed In the United States in the 1800s and you could subscribe to one that was of utmost importance to southern plantation owners. This magazine dealt with slave upkeep, among other things.
DeBow’s Review (Debow’s) was a widely circulated magazine of “agricultural, commercial and industrial progress and resource,” in the South. The magazine was published from 1846 to 1880. Debow’s, “recommended the best practices for wringing profits from slaves.” Debow’s was named after its first editor, James Dunwoody Brownson Debow.
Debow’s introduced knowledgeable insight like this from its May 1860 issue about a slave’s diet, “Plums are excellent for hogs, but unfit for Negroes and children for they are sure to take them, skin, seed, pulp, and all… Finally, I repeat that the food for Negroes should be cooked either by the cook for the white family, or by some other woman.”
The magazine even provided insightful fashion tips like this for slaves, “Negroes should be well clothed, and that they should have woolen outer garments-at least in the winter season, while they should be made to wear them, and not allowed to change them until the warm weather.”
What about how to deal with slaves in rainy weather? Debow’s has you covered there as well, “If Negroes could be kept constantly engaged in active labor, they might work all day in the rain without the least risk, provided that they could put on dry clothing as soon as they ceased exercising.”
Debow’s even gave its “scientifically,” approved opinion about the difference between free black citizens and enslaved ones and its opinion of the black race. The magazine dropped such gems like, “free Negroes in the North are generally considered a nuisance, as they have been in every community on earth, just proportion as the race among which they lived was industrious, elevated or virtuous….their laziness, their viciousness, their licentiousness and improvidence, have soon disgusted their best friends, and made the several communities in which they dealt, anxious to be rid of them.”
“Nearly all travelers who have visited both the Northern and Southern States of America, are agreed that the condition of the free Negro in the North is worse than that of the slave in the South.”
“The fact is, the Negroes in the North display their inherent characteristics of laziness, determined ignorance, sensuality, vice, filth, and improvidence-traits which disgust all virtuous and industrious citizens; and to charge these traits upon southern slavery, shows a total misconception of the African character, which has been improved and elevated, as we have shown, by slavery in the South.”
Last but not least, this gem that talks about slaves but can be applied to today’s modern day capitalist system, “that country is most prosperous, most enlightened, and most progressive, where the poor are worked the hardest, and for the least wages or allowance…and where labor is cheapest,and the masses hardest worked, and worst paid, the nation is richest, most prosperous and progressive.”
Debow’s also advocated to resume the African slave trade and for Southern cession as the Civil War loomed.
The mere existence of Debow’s magazine shows the many moral faults in slave owners. They viewed slaves as non-human, so they needed a guide to tell them common sense ideas like slaves need wool clothes to work in the cold, or slaves need to change to dry, warm clothes after working in the rain. The magazine then reinforced many negative stereotypes about the black population to “show” the need for slavery.
That there was a magazine that gave tips on how to maximize productivity from slaves will shock many people and it shouldn’t. As I stated earlier, there is a magazine dedicated to porta-potties in 2023. It makes sense that in the 1800s, there was a magazine that not only gave “slavery productivity” tips but also promoted slavery and negative black stereotypes.
During the Civil War (1864-1865), Debow’s was suspended but resumed operation in 1866, with a renewed focus on accepting President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction plan. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the end of slavery that was the demise of Debow’s. The magazine kept publishing until 1880, where it ceased due to increased publishing expenses. The magazine underwent many name changes after 1880 and was finally absorbed into the Agricultural Review and Industrial Monthly of New York in 1884.
