USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -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-2: -Main Idea Cash crops grew very well in the Southern Colonies. The long growing season and warm, damp climate of the Southern Colonies made the region perfect for growing tobacco and rice. Many southern planters became very wealthy exporting these cash crops to other colonies and countries.

Detailed explanation-3: -The cash crops of the southern colonies included cotton, tobacco, rice, and indigo (a plant that was used to create blue dye). In Virginia and Maryland, the main cash crop was tobacco. In South Carolina and Georgia, the main cash crops were indigo and rice.

Detailed explanation-4: -Plantation economies rely on the export of cash crops as a source of income. Prominent crops included cotton, rubber, sugar cane, tobacco, figs, rice, kapok, sisal, and species in the genus Indigofera, used to produce indigo dye.

Detailed explanation-5: -By 1850, of the 3.2 million slaves in the country’s fifteen slave states, 1.8 million were producing cotton; by 1860, slave labor was producing over two billion pounds of cotton per year. Indeed, American cotton soon made up two-thirds of the global supply, and production continued to soar.