I read it a year or two ago and was moved to tears repeatedly.
I do realize the novel was written as a motivator (or, we might call it propaganda) to convince the nation that the Democrat party was wrong for supporting slavery...but it was also, I understand, not too far from the truth.
The story is told along several lines, but there is a true and distinct line between slave owners who treated their slaves in a caring manner (though still as property) and those slave owners who treated their slaves as mere chattel.
The sadness in the book is profound. But worth the time...and shows the institution of slavery (as practiced in the European colonies and their progeny—I do not speak of the ancient economic system) was indeed a wicked one.
The white sharecroppers in the South were on average worse off then the slaves. Except the whites had their freedom. Freedom to starve. When they dug some of the canals down here they used the Irish, slaves were too valuable.