Most students of the US Civil War view Confederate Jefferson Davis as the most prominent Southern leader who believed that secession was the correct course of Southern states seeking refuge from an imposing Northern government. Certainly he was, however, the Southern leader, James D. B. DeBow was a political theorist with a wide following. DeBow was the former head of the US Census Bureau. He was also the editor of Debow's Review, the South's preeminent intellectual and political theory publication. DeBow was a pioneer in statistics and a recognized social scientist. In his view the South had to pursue a purely defensive posture and that the secession was not a revolutionary or hostile act at all. Secession was a measure of self protection from those in power in the North whose political goals were in contravention of the US Constitution. For DeBow, based on what the US Supreme Court had ruled in the 1857 Dredd Scott case, saw the Republican Party as a political institution with goals running contrary to the Constitution and making no legal efforts to amend that governing document. DeBow claimed that the South was resisting the Republican Party's own revolution to undermine the Constitution.
