This dissertation contends that antebellum southern men of letters were consistent in their social, political, and economic ideas, which demonstrated both coherence and integrity. Informed by the slaveholders' world view, their ideas reflected the paradoxical nature of the Old South as a slave society enmeshed in a capitalist world market and were therefore at odds with those of the North. This study focuses on James D. B. De Bow, the founder of De Bow's Review and well-known defender of the southern way of life, particularly the institution of slavery. Based upon his student journal, college writings and speeches, as well as his articles published in the Review from 1846-67, this study maintains that De Bow's ideas on slavery were consistent with his long-held belief that slavery, as ordained by God, was an institution suitable for a naturally inferior race, and was an appropriate social system for the "union with whites in an unequal relation." Furthermore, this study also shows that there was no fundamental conflict between De Bow's ideas on slavery and economic development in the South. He instead adjusted and modified classical political economy to suit the conditions of the Old South. Even though one major influence on De Bow's intellectual development was Scottish Realism, his economic ideas were shaped decisively by the slaveholders' world view that served as a general ideological guideline for southerners regarding the notions of a proper social order. De Bow's economic thought represented the agricultural arm of merchant capital, but the southern society to which he belonged did not presage industrial capitalism. He believed that progress and the prosperity of society were based on commodity exchanges rather than on the production process. His economic ideas thus were at odds with the principles of classical political economy, which rationalized the needs of emerging industrial capital. For De Bow, economic progress was compatible with slavery. He defended slavery as a proper social system for modern civilization and offered it as an alternative form of social organization to the emerging free labor system.