Physically mistreated. I remember reading one narrative from a nine year old slave boy who said he cried himself to sleep every night. Not because anybody was mean to him, but he just wasn’t free. That being said, some slaves and their owners all had hard killing work to do just to stay alive.
BTW: By the time of the War of Northern Aggression, many slaves were already operating on a share cropping basis with their owners.
parsy, who hopes that clears it up
Clears it up? Nope. Your position requires the belief that slavery in itself is not mistreatment and can, in some cases, be benign. That is the trouble. If you actually believe that slavery of any kind is less than evil then we will never find common ground on this.