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alternatehistory.com
I'm trying to find evidence of which crops were much more profitable with slavery, and for which crops free labour was competitive.
The map available here suggests slavery was heavily preferenced in crops along the River Missouri, and potentially would be if it had been allowed heading into Nebraska:
Obviously cotton and sugar are the obvious ones are preferencing slavery. Tobacco seems to be a more marginal case. What about maize, wheat etc? Would there have been more slavery in the old North West had attitudes and legal restrictions been different. What about crops in Latin America, had chattel slavery occurred there?
I'm also interested in how this may have been different for non-agricultural activities. In Southern Brazil they used slaves for tending livestock, which seemed competitive with the free labour of the same economy in Uruguay. The silver mines of Bolivia obviously used slaves in a big way - could this have happened in California during the gold rush?