Before the beginning of slavery, America was trying to find new ways to have prosperous income and were struggling.
- During the early 1600’s the colonies, especially those in the South, were increasingly reliant on cash crops that required labor to tend and harvest them
- Virginia was experiencing economic issues tied to the best way to profitably harvest tobacco
- These hardships forced Virginia to look at other countries for new approaches to labor to support economic prosperity and slave labor was seen as a way to control costs
- Slaves were an attractive source of labor because it cost less to buy a slave than pay a person to work