After Native Americans were annihilated, dislocated, or marginalized by public as well as private efforts, the crop grown on Edmondson's Reserve greatly shaped the lives of its new residents. In the late 17th century, tobacco was the first successful crop grown there and shipped to Europe from Maryland, and its labor-intensive year-round cultivation became the reason for slavery in Maryland. By the census of 1790, 57% of the slaves in the U.S. were in Maryland and Virginia, the "Tobacco South," in contrast to the Deep South's "Cotton South," where labor-intensive crops such as cotton, rice, and sugar were grown. Tobacco soon declined on the Eastern Shore because of soil depletion and unstable foreign markets, and by 1750 grain exports matched its value. By 1790 Maryland was in a grain boom that required less, more seasonal labor, so landowners such as those at nearby Doncaster began turning to tenant farmers. Some local enslaved people were sold to meet labor demand in the Cotton South, some fled, including Sydney Still, and many more were freed, including Sydney Still's husband from Greensboro, who then moved to New Jersey. Many other freed slaves remained in Maryland, became small farmers, and bought and freed their enslaved relatives. As the Civil War approached, 79% of African Americans in Caroline County were free, and white and black landowners and tenant farmers grew grain on former tobacco plantations such as Edmondson's Reserve.