I know of one slave my ancestors owned. He was a Jesuit priest who sold himself to my ancestor during the protestant reformation in Maryland (1730's) and thus became property of the Manor Lord and untouchable under English Common Law. Otherwise, he would have been hanged or worse for being a member of the Catholic Clergy.
When things settled down he bought himself back.
Not all slaves were black. Not all owners were white, and not all owners treated their slaves like the fictional accounts in the abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.
So I reckon if you were a slave four years was 1461 days, much like it was for anyone else, anywhere else.
The grand myth is that somehow most Southern slaves were treated any worse than Northern ones.
The war was over taxes, not slavery.
I think I understand what you are trying to say. In other words that besides being forced to work all day and seeing your children sold off to the highest bidder that slavery was not all that bad of an institution.
I think the last time I heard that one was from an 89 year old uncle from Mississippi back in 1967.
I love history and I was reading something on the internet the other day about slavery. It said that some blacks owned their own slaves. I had never thought of that. I wish I had book marked the site but I have no idea where it was.