Yes. Farming was profitable for individual people, but the southern aristocracy wanted to be the primary export of Cotton to Britain's Textile Mills (the heart of the industrial revolution at the time). As a result it centralized the economy and kept free southerners from actually sharing in profits and creating intergenerational wealth.
Slavery held back the south and only benefited slavers and that was only until the cotton gin
Yes. Farming was profitable for individual people, but the southern aristocracy wanted to be the primary export of Cotton to Britain's Textile Mills (the heart of the industrial revolution at the time). As a result it centralized the economy and kept free southerners from actually sharing in profits and creating intergenerational wealth.
Eventually Britain and France just went to India.