Slowly a free Black population emerged, concentrated in port cities along the Atlantic coast from Charleston to Boston. Enslaved people who lived in the cities and towns had more privileges than enslaved people who did not, but the great majority of enslaved people lived on southern tobacco or rice plantations, usually in groups of 20 or more.[18] Wealthy plantation owners eventually became so reliant on slavery that they devastated their own lower class.[19] In the years to come, the institution of slavery would be so heavily involved in the South's economy that it would divide America.