This is not entirely accurate. While there were certainly a number of small farm units in the early days of slavery in America, there were also many large plantation units, especially in the South. Plantations were large agricultural estates that were worked by enslaved people, and they came to be a defining feature of the American South. These plantations often encompassed thousands of acres of land and were owned by wealthy landowners who relied on the labor of enslaved people to cultivate crops such as cotton, tobacco, and rice.