Why were the largest slave population found in the Southern colonies?
In the South, the economy was based on cotton, the production of which is highly labor-intensive, but does not require skilled workers. Slavery had all but disappeared in the North by the end of the 1780s, and it would have died out in the South as well, except that the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 made cotton-growing economically viable. Without the cotton gin, the plantation/slave culture of the South would not have continued as it did. Edit: Jesse, you are right that Africans and their descendants can carry DNA making them less susceptible to the effects of malaria (the same is true of some southern Europeans and other Mediterranean dwellers). Inheriting the gene from one parent confers this effect. Unfortunately, inheriting the gene from both parents causes sickle-cell disease. However, even if the slaveholders knew this, it was not the reason they held slaves.
