Slavery came into the US the same way it came into the Caribbean. In the latter, sugar production was massively profitable but required a lot of back-breaking, unpleasant manual labor. African slaves - not viewed as 'real people' even by Britain - could be cheaply imported, worked to death and replaced. In the colonies it was tobacco, hemp, indigo and rice (along with a little cotton) that required lots of labor so the same labor pool was (forcibly) tapped.
Part of the later British resistance to slavery stemmed from putting down slave revolts in Jamaica and the smaller sugar islands.
Indentured servitude was available as a recruiting tool for all of the colonies. Unsurprisingly it drew more people to the central and northern states, where hard manual labor in blazing heat was not required. Slavery was simply cheaper. And later, if white European immigrants went to the center or north they could pretty quickly hope to move inland and homestead their own land. Homesteading property in the deep south was less attractive - you needed labor for the main cash crops, the climate is abominable and the land is wooded instead of plains.
Some of that is a generalization - unavoidable in a general discussion. The main point is that slave labor was more economical than indentured, and if slavery had been successfully prohibited from the beginning of southern colonization there would have been little development there.
Part of the later British resistance to slavery stemmed from putting down slave revolts in Jamaica and the smaller sugar islands.
Indentured servitude was available as a recruiting tool for all of the colonies. Unsurprisingly it drew more people to the central and northern states, where hard manual labor in blazing heat was not required. Slavery was simply cheaper. And later, if white European immigrants went to the center or north they could pretty quickly hope to move inland and homestead their own land. Homesteading property in the deep south was less attractive - you needed labor for the main cash crops, the climate is abominable and the land is wooded instead of plains.
Some of that is a generalization - unavoidable in a general discussion. The main point is that slave labor was more economical than indentured, and if slavery had been successfully prohibited from the beginning of southern colonization there would have been little development there.