There is a true story of a runaway slave brought to court in Indiana for a possible return. The judge asked if he was beaten, and he said, "Oh, no. Massa was good to me. We were the best of friends. Hunted and fished togehter."
Q: What was your food like?
Slave: "Oh, it was good. Ham and taters. At Christmas we got a roast pig."
Q: What kind of living quarters did you have?
Slave: "Massa gave us a nice cabin with flowers around it."
Judge, Q: "Well, I don't understand. If things were so good, why did you run away."
Slave: "Well, yo' honor, the job is still open if you'd like to apply for it."
This is a true testimony from an Indiana court. Jefferson's words and ideas were great, among the best in human history, but you fool yourself if you think that his character matched his words. Simply put, he was in debt because of his spending---any biography of J. will reveal that, and he needed slaves "wages" or not (which, when you are a slave, is meaningless) to run his plantation. And yes, even with slave labor, numerous plantations were in deep debt because of the lack of capital/machinery innovation due to an ENSLAVED WORK FORCE that had no stake in improving the productive process.
Among the more 4 or 5 benign? Too many tend to equate slaveowners with Satan himself. There are bad apples in every group but the vast majority were merely trying to make ends meet. Think for a moment, a "free" person works hard for years to earn enough $$$ to buy a slave would not constantly beat him with a whip, starve him, deny medical treatment, or deprive him of every human kindness. Yes, I said human because they were considered 3/5th of a person. I'll give you they were probably treated like horses but remember horses HAD to be kept in prime condition or your crops didn't come in, your family starved, and you lost your land.
My grandmother would tell stories her grandmother told her. Granny said she was glad the slaves were set free because they were too much of a bother. It was easier to hire out or have share croppers because with slaves you had the responsibility to house, clothe, feed, and take care of them. But just like today, there are those who won't work menial jobs so who else was there other than slave labor? Their own house, like their neighbors, and clothes weren't that much better than the slaves' and they ate beans at every meal just like their slaves. I have pictures and their house was just a small wooden frame and gramps held his raggedy pants up with a rope - a far cry from Tara of the movies. She also said that they owned them because they were inherited and it was *the way things were* then. Hmm, guess that shows families were NOT always split apart; remember Jefferson and many others had multi-generations. Unhappy slaves made poor workers. Slaves were a responsibility. I'm certainly not saying the life of a slave was utopia but it wasn't as bad as bad as so many try to make it.