The economy of the southern colonies was greatly dependent on slaves, which grew at an overwhelming rate from the years of 1607-1775. Demands for certain agricultural products rose, such as rice and tobacco, and more labor was needed. Before slaves began importing by great masses to the colonies, and manual labor was still needed, Virginia and Maryland established the "headright" system, encouraging the unemployed bourgeois of England to immigrate to America and work as servants. As masters grew increasingly apprehensive of the rising multitude of contumacious former, they replaced them with slaves, who, in comparison, were easier to manage and more inexpensive, as there was no need to compensate them for their labor. The velocious growth in slavery and slave trade was significantly influenced by economic, geographic, and social factors of the Southern colonies.
Slaves were also more convenient to use in comparison to Native Americans and indentured servants, as Native American's died too quickly once in contact with American settlers, and indentured servants were required to give land and basic custodies based on the headright system. Buying slaves was not difficult, they captured by tribe leaders, who traded them for simple European goods, and were not difficult to replace if they could no longer work. .
Shipped in thousands into unknown land, in which language, culture, and religion were significantly different; there was less of a chance for escape from plantations, as they were unfamiliar with the terrain, unlike the Native Americans. They were also accustomed to tropical climates, given that their home countries were also tropical lands. More immune to malaria and other tropical disease, African slaves did not die at such alarming rates as white settlers, as they were also more.
Slaves did die in large masses, either from brutal treatment, work or disease. Some, as Thomas Phillips, commander of the ship Hannibal noted in September of 1693, jumped off ships to drown, or starved themselves, their beliefs that when they die they return to their mother country, family and friends once more.
