As simple as that question seems, I'm sorta unsure how to answer it. Cotton was a boom crop that had huge demand in the textile mills. Tobacco preceded it, and

As simple as that question seems, I'm sorta unsure how to answer it. Cotton was a boom crop that had huge demand in the textile mills. Tobacco preceded it, and for all I know, with tobacco farming, slavery would have ended on its own. Tobacco is much higher-skill than cotton, and that could easily have led to a much gentler slope out of slavery. It's all a tangled mess of counterfactuals. The aristocrats in the South were definitely riding the tiger, and could not afford to compromise on the Peculiar Institution.