It isn’t polite to say so, but a lot of them, especially in the upper South, lived far better than factory workers in the North including better food, living arrangements, time off, old age care and the like.
...
If you had the choice, which would you be?
But many people would pick the slave option because it offered some certainty and security, at least at a very low level.
A lot of people knowingly vote for that every time they pull the Democrat lever: slavery not only for them, but for their fellow Americans as well. That plus further elevation of their ruling class masters to make a fair distribution of what the collective earns.
Plantations were merely mini-models of a liberal utopia-- just do as you're told and progressive massa will take care of you.
In ways we are slaves now to the federal government. Sharecroppers would probably be more accurate for most Americans but slave fits others. Painful but true.