Southern whites approved of slavery because it kept the colonial economy afloat. For work that white laborers (indentured servants) refused to do, slaves became a substitute. In Georgia, where the labor intensive job of farming rice was refused by white servants, slaves were able to do that work in their place. Slavery is also considered one of the main precedents to slavery, meaning that as black slaves were put down in society, whites (including those who didn’t own slaves) came to think of them as naturally inferior.