For the reasons behind the seemingly simultaneous growth of slavery and freedom, Edmund S. Morgan points to a slaveholding force that had been isolated by race and racism, a large group of wealthy, politically minded planters extremely loyal to Virginia and an even larger group of poorer farmers who had become convinced that their interests would be best served by those wealthy plantation barons. Plantations needed labor to grow tobacco and other crops. African American slaves proved to be the solution to the labor issue. Wealthy Virginians wanted to control the economy of Virginian society. Poor whites realized that it would be better to have relative freedom and get along with wealthy plantation owners than to be the blood, sweat, and tears behind the rich people's plantation work. These three components, mixed with the rise of republican ideas, allowed American slavery and American freedom to thrive side by side