The horrors of slavery were perpetrated by otherwise normal people though. It’s different from how it’s often portrayed in that the big plantations were rarities and most slaveholders only owned a few, which were a significant enough investment not to destroy through wanton cruelty. Maybe in that sense the excesses/horrors weren’t perpetrated by “ordinary people” but by the rich of their day, but on the flip side the majority of slaveholders and the majority of slaves were on smaller farms. It wasn’t a dichotomy between the wealthy planting class and then just a bunch of poor whites being told they’re just higher than the highest black. That’s a distortion of history.