Historically, importing them from Africa (regardless of their feelings in the matter) was the main option.
Plantations needed many workers, including indentured servants, to cultivate labor-intensive crops like tobacco, sugar, and cotton. The demand for these crops led to the need for a large and cheap labor force to maximize profit for plantation owners. Indentured servants provided a source of labor that was more affordable than other forms of labor at the time.
Sugar and cotton plantations required many workers because these crops demanded labor-intensive tasks such as planting, weeding, harvesting, and processing. Machines were not advanced enough at that time to replace human labor. Additionally, the harsh working conditions often led to high turnover rates, requiring constant recruitment of new workers.
Large farms that have labor intensive crops, or large amounts of land required large work forces. Slaves were bought to work on large plantations as a sort of free form of labour for the slave owners.
The planter group (those who held 20 or more slaves) made up under 4% of the adult white men in the south, held more than 1/2 of the slaves and produced most of the cotton and tobacco and all of the sugar and rice, thus most slaves lived on large plantations.
slave trade increased because people in south started growing lots of tobacco, the people in the south had large plantations but not enough workers so when people started shipping slave to the new world, the farmers wanted more and more slaves. Thats why the south had more slaves than the northern colonies
planters
The planters had large plantations and were rich and the yeoman had small farms and were poor.
They hired other people to do it for them.
Europeans had started huge sugar and tobacco plantations in the Americas. They needed large numbers of workers for these plantations, and slavery was one way to get them
About 25% of southern farmers were planters by 1860, owning large plantations and over 20 slaves. They were part of the planter elite in the antebellum South.
There were many things true about Southern planters. Southern farmers often owned slaves, worked large plantations, and harvested crops like tobacco, cotton, and sugar.
Southern colonies had rich soil and warm climate
Plantations
Plantations
Very few large plantations that needed a large number of workers.
Southern plantations were large and needed many workers, but most southern colonists lived on small family farms. plantations, but small farms were much more common.
People were either wealthy planters who owned large sucsesful plantations or the were poor white farmers. but most of the population was made up by slaves.