[the OlLine Rebel]

You skipped over tobacco.

Tobacco was the huge crop before cotton.

[Vesparado]

You are right, of course. My point, however, is that while there were black slaves used in tobacco it was the introduction of rice farming (mainly by the Brits working out of the Caribbean where black slavery was already well established) that really saw the big rise in the use of black slaves in the southern states.