Globalization of the United States, 1789-1861

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DeBow, James D.B. Statistical View of the United States, Embracing its Territory, Population — White, Free Colored, and Slave — Moral and Social Condition, Industry, Property, and Revenue.... Washington DC: A.O.P. Nicholson, Public Printer, 1854.

James D.B. DeBow. Statistical View of the United States, Embracing its Territory, Population - White, Free Colored, and Slave - Moral and Social Condition, Industry, Property, and Revenue.... Washington DC: A.O.P. Nicholson, Public Printer, 1854. Title page.

A publisher who filled his magazine with sundry statistics, DeBow could extract copious data from the sophisticated 1850 federal census which he himself had overseen.

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The importance of correct information regarding the age, sex, condition, occupation and numbers of a people, their moral and social state, their education and industry, is now universally recognized among the enlightened of all civilized nations. Where this information can be had for periods running back very far, and for many countries, it furnishes the material for contrasts and comparisons the most instructive, and for deducing the soundest rules in the administration of Government, or in promoting the general welfare of society.

Statistics are far from being the barren array of figures ingeniously and laboriously combined into columns and tables, which many persons are apt to suppose them. They constitute rather the ledger of a nation, in which, like the merchant in his books, the citizen can read, at one view, all of the results of a year or of a period of years, as compared with other periods, and deduce the profit or the loss which has been made, in morals, education, wealth or power.