slave labor was very common across the world pre-1776, as attitudes started to change around that time.
do you think the pyramids were built by contractors??
Since the article was about the 1860s, I assumed you were talking about slave labor being the norm in 1860. Which it wasn’t, unless you consider poor people with no alternate way of making a living to be slaves.
And, yes, it does appear the pyramids were built by contractors, or at least by men paid wages who often worked on these projects for generations.
It should be pointed out that the association of a slave’s position as inevitably one of degradation, poverty and powerlessness is not universal. In most “oriental” monarchies all subjects, including the highest nobility, referred to themselves as slaves of the king.
In many societies some slaves rose to positions of status and power, even becoming monarchs themselves. Notably the Slave sultans of India, the janissaries and the mamelukes. But there were lots of others.
certainly the legal provisions for those who built the pyramids were different from those of the antebellum south.