If you're interested in Slavery, you might also want to read the interesting book, Cane River, by Lalita Tademe, a former high-tech exec who wrote the history of her family as slaves in Louisiana. Slaves were slaves and did plenty of work, according to this book, but they were to a certain extent integrated into the families that owned them and were not treated miserably.
I got the book I cited earlier, A History of the South, at eBay for a couple of dollars. It's an excellent textbook.