Dew was well respected in the South; his widely-distributed writings helped to confirm pro-slavery public opinion. His work has been compared to that of the Southern surgeon and medical authority Samuel A. Cartwright, who defended slavery and invented the "diseases" of drapetomania (the "madness" that makes slaves want to run away), and dysaesthesia aethiopica (""), both of which were "cured" with beatings. His 1833 "Review" was republished in 1849, and collected in "The Pro-Slavery Argument", together with writings by Harper, Hammond and Simms.