What types of labor sources did plantation owners in the south use?

Plantation owners in the South primarily relied on enslaved African Americans as their main labor source, utilizing their forced labor to cultivate cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, and sugar. In addition to enslaved labor, some plantations employed indentured servants and a small number of free laborers, particularly during periods of labor shortages. Sharecropping also emerged after the Civil War, where freedmen and poor whites worked the land in return for a share of the crop, though this often led to cycles of debt and poverty.