That important statistical journal and organ of pro-slavery propaganda, De Bow's Commercial Review, opened its number for August, 1857, with a somewhat cursory article upon the second of Mr. Olmsted's books descriptive of the social and economic features of the South. This article, which was from the pen of Mr. De Bow himself, referred to the prior work of Mr. Olmsted that is here reprinted as “abounding in bitterness and prejudice of every sort,” and, after charging him with pandering to abolitionist fanaticism for the sake of gain, continued as follows:

Mr. Olmsted took occasion later to reply to the aspersions of his critic in a tone of notable moderation. He regretted that the “most able and just-minded statistician in the country” should have condescended to adopt the current partisan practice of attributing unworthy motives to all persons not of his way of thinking with regard to slavery. If Mr. Olmsted had been less modest, he might have called attention to the fact that Mr. De Bow had found little beyond a rash prediction or two on which to rest his censures, and had thus been thrown back upon general denunciations of the kind just illustrated.