USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Slavery was so profitable, it sprouted more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River valley than anywhere in the nation. 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?

Detailed explanation-2: -Tobacco and cotton proved to be exceptionally profitable. Therefore, cheap labor was used. Initially, indentured servants, who were mostly from England (and sometimes from Africa), and enslaved African and (less often) Indigenous people to work the land.

Detailed explanation-3: -Slave owners in the Lower South profited because the people they purchased were forced to labor in the immensely productive cotton and sugar fields. The merchants who supplied clothing and food to the slave traders profited, as did steamboat, railroad, and ship owners who carried enslaved people.

Detailed explanation-4: -In the lower South the majority of slaves lived and worked on cotton plantations. Most of these plantations had fifty or fewer slaves, although the largest plantations have several hundred. Cotton was by far the leading cash crop, but slaves also raised rice, corn, sugarcane, and tobacco.