USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -With cash crops of tobacco, cotton and sugar cane, America’s southern states became the economic engine of the burgeoning nation. Their fuel of choice? Human slavery. If the Confederacy had been a separate nation, it would have ranked as the fourth richest in the world at the start of the Civil War.

Detailed explanation-2: -Economy. The Southern economy was almost entirely based on farming. Rice, indigo, tobacco, sugarcane, and cotton were cash crops. Crops were grown on large plantations where slaves and indentured servants worked the land.

Detailed explanation-3: -By the early 1800s, cotton emerged as the South’s major cash crop-a good produced for commercial value instead of for use by the owner. Cotton quickly eclipsed tobacco, rice, and sugar in economic importance.

Detailed explanation-4: -The southern colonies’ economy was based on agriculture (farming). Many of the colonists who came to the southern colonies were rich aristocrats or businessmen from England and they wanted to become even more wealthy from owning land.