Section+2+The+Agricultural+South

A plantation economy arises  Since Jamestown, people have successfully settled due to its importation of tobacco and started to look for the fertile soil that stretched from the Chesapeake region to Georgia. Robert Carter, like his father and grandfather before him, specialized in raising a single **cash crop **—one grown primarily for sale rather than for the farmer’s own use. In Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, farmers grew the broad green leaves of tobacco. In South Carolina and Georgia, rice and later indigo were successful cash crops.   A diverse and prosperous people  During the 1700s, large numbers of European immigrants traveled to North America in search of a new start. The influx of immigrants helped create a diverse population in both the Northern and Southern colonies. In the South, thousands of Germans settled throughout Maryland and Virginia and as far south as South Carolina. There they raised grain, livestock, and tobacco. A wave of Scots and Scots-Irish also settled in the South, residing mainly along the hills of western North Carolina.  Slave trade  Before the English started the mass transportation of slaves, they used few of them for a faster colonization. 