People came here in the early years of the country because they heard there was free land. In Euope, the noblity owned the land, and drove the peasants off it when they discovered that they could raise sheep or cattle and sell the wool. meat and leather.
Many then realized that the land that was available was heavily forested and they needed to clear it before they could plant. anything. Many came as indentured servants and had to work off the cost of their passage.
There were two good ways to get rich in the New World: finding gold and buying land and slaves and have the slaves clear the land. The main crops were tobacco and indigo. Cotton was a huge amount of work until the cotton gin was invented. That was when cotton really took off. Andrew Jackson noticed that members of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Creek and Chickasaw tribes had cleared a lot of land for farming. So he called on the Army to drive them out of many Southern states into Oklahoma. Then he sold the land they had farmed on for $1.25 and acre, about $49 an acre in today's money. The Supreme Court agreed with the Indians that this was illegal,by the way.