ABSTRACT
Commercial agriculture before the Civil War reached its fullest development in the rice, cotton, and sugar planting areas of the Deep South. Rice plantations were chiefly found on the lower reaches of the Savannah, the Altamaha, the Edisto, the Santee, and the Combahee rivers in Georgia and South Carolina on land above the salt-water level but capable of being overflowed by fresh water pushed back by the tide. Rice was an exotic crop requiring much crude labor, skillful management, and a large investment of capital. The quantity of agricultural implements used in growing rice was almost negligible, so primitive were the methods of preparing the soil, sowing the seed, cultivating, and harvesting the grain. Sugar production was centered on land bordering on the lower Mississippi, the Lafourche, the Atchafalaya, and Bayou Teche in twenty-four parishes in southern Louisiana. Sugar, like rice, required a high degree of technical skill at certain points in its productivity, particularly in the refining process.
