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A thought I have been toying with for awhile, and GreatScottMarty's indentured servitude thread got me thinking again. Could it have been possible for a man to have set up a cotton plantation in the antebellum South that used wage labor instead of slaves, and that plantation be profitable and effectively compete with its slave-owning plantations neighbors?

Would it make it more possible if this plantation was in Texas as opposed to Mississippi? Would it make it more possible if our virtuous entrepeneur was fairly wealthy at the beginning of his venture in order to make it through the first few lean years? Would love to see someone be able to construct a plausible scenario where this plantation owner not only could make a wage labor plantation profitable but make it more economically advantageous than the slave labor plantation.
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