How Did Slavery Encouraged The Southern Economy

1. Slave ownership gradually became more concentrated as the price of slaves increased. After the 1808 ban on participation in international trade, many in the eastern slaveholding states began to sell increasing numbers of slaves to the Deep South. Though the selling area gradually diversified, it stayed almost entirely agricultural and the buying region grew almost exclusively cotton. This product was mostly for transport to the Northeast for processing and its massive land use required bringing in food raised elsewhere. But, to continue the King Cotton economy on that scale in the absence of mechanization, slaves had to be continually purchased when “natural increase” could not supply labor demand.
2. Slavery encouraged the Southern economy, especially in the Deep South, to specialize in intensive agriculture, cotton in particular. It was a labor intensive crop and could only be profitable if pursued on large scales with vast armies of workers. Investment in this one crop and its one means of production stymied the South in virtually every other growth metric compared to the North. They were orders of magnitude behind in terms of urban population, immigration, railroad and telegraph wire miles. But, with so much wealth tied up in land, cotton, and slaves,
There were both push and pull factors leading to immigration to the US, the North in particular. Northern states were expanding their railroad network, their factories, their farms in the Western additions to the Northern states, and so on. Shipping expanded along with it as American goods went to global markets. Each of these fields required more and more workers, and so contractors were sent to Europe to hire new hands. In Europe itself there were pull factors ranging from a reopening of movement after the final defeat of Napoleon to the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s. Still others followed the age-old dream of being able to pursue their faith without government interference. All saw America as a way