Final answer:
Slavery in the Southern Colonies was fostered by the demands of an agricultural economy requiring vast labor, influenced by the migration of individuals from slave-established regions and cemented by slave laws which legally reduced Africans to property.
Step-by-step explanation:
Slavery developed in the Southern Colonies mainly due to the region's agricultural economy which required large amounts of labor to be profitable. In the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland, and the Low Country colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, slavery was integral to the economy, with tobacco, rice, indigo, and later cotton and sugar plantations generating significant wealth. The existence of slavery created an economic aristocracy and a political ruling class in these regions. Moreover, early migrants from places like Barbados, where slavery was already well-established, contributed to its rapid advancement in the Carolinas. The passage of slave laws based on the Barbados slave codes entrenched the status of Africans as property in the legal systems of the Carolinas during the early 1700s, thus formalizing and expanding the institution of slavery.