The historian John Hope Franklin has argued that many slaves in antebellum North Carolina lived in a state of "virtual freedom," able to come and go as they pleased, and to work for folks in town and pocket their pay.
"That such a condition could have existed at any time in antebellum North Carolina suggests a laxity in the enforcement of the slave code that, of itself, made for the rise of a group of slaves who were almost completely beyond the pale of regimentation."
John Hope Franklin, "Slaves Virtually Free in Antebellum North Carolina," in Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988, 91.
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Journal published an article some years back saying something along these lines. These sorts of reports do not fit well with modern day goals.
And there's
several documents that record that slaves often were given as much as two weeks off for the Christmas holidays, to travel to meet family in the North, or wherever else, before returning back to work.
Y'know... when one studies up on how slavery really was in the Old South, they can't help but think that we, in modern America, are far more the slaves than anyone ever was in the 1800s.