Slavery endowed every slave owner with all powers of government. You truly replaced one tyrant a thousand miles away with a thousand tyrants one mile away.
Assault under color of authority: legal under slavery. Rape: legal under slavery.
Theft: legal under slavery.
Kidnapping: legal under slavery.
Freedom of speech forbidden: legal under slavery.
Right to keep and bear arms forbidden: legal under slavery.
Imprisonment: Legal under slavery.
Forbidden to vote: Legal under slavery.
And then, to keep all the rules of the slave owners, the slave power forced people who did not own slaves to patrol for escaped or run away slaves. When the insurrection began, men who didn’t own slaves were conscripted to support the insurrection.
Indeed.
To add: several conservative historians rightly show that the fusion of slaveholders and government preserved slavery, and without government support there was a likelihood that slavery would have collapsed under runaways, high enforcement costs, straight out violent resistance, and legal opposition.