You could read the book called Two Years Before the Mast.
That is about privation of the Ordinary Seaman in the Age of Sail. Very much like slavery. Military conscription is a type of slavery.
Or, read, Black Like Me. This is about a white man in the 50s that dyed his skin with walnut juice. Something to see first hand, he found out, this racism from slavery fear.
The simple fact is that rebellion by a few slaves here and there, caused WE the people to over-react against insurrection. It is a fact that these slave codes began because of fear. And fear against fear is just more escalated fear. We saw that in the Cold War.
"These rebellions were not confined to the South. In fact, one of the earliest examples of a slave uprising was in 1712 in Manhattan. As African Americans in the colonies grew greater and greater in number, there was a justifiable paranoia on the part of the white settlers that a violent rebellion could occur in one's own neighborhood. It was this
fear of rebellion that led each colony to pass a series of laws restricting slaves' behaviors. The laws were known as slave codes."
http://www.ushistory.org/us/6f.asp
It could be a good movie or just a bunch of sensationalized violence, like Martin Bashir's comment on Palin. Bashir just showed his true colors (pun) about how he relishes sadism.
If you have a good master, that is much different from having a bad one, any slave will tell you. But, you are still a slave. It has very little to do with the corner case horror of psychopaths with slaves. Even a good master's son can kill a slave on a whim. Not legal in most states, but not charged or ever punished.
It is abuse, no matter what way you look at it. It is warlord arbitrary, and outside the rule of law. I thought Dejango was a pretty good representation, minus the spaghetti and the hard rock sound tracks.