Actually the opposite is true. Most slaves did not live on large plantations, for the simple reason that relatively few Southerners owned plantations that included fifty or more slaves. According to the 1860 census of Alabama the average number of slaves per slaveholding households was five. Of course that means that half of the people who owned slaves in that state had one to five slaves. Those numbers could not have been much different elsewhere.

The common calculation for slaveholding percentages takes into account only slaveowners and not members of their families. This produces unbalanced percentages which make it appear that only a few Southerners lived with slaves. You'll notice that the stories related about slaves going off to war with a young man don't mention who owned the slave. Unless the soldiers mentioned had lost both parents or had received a deed for the slave, the slave probably belonged to the head of household. By narrow definition the soldier isn't a slaveowner, even though a slave accompanied him off to war.

To fairly calculate slaveholding in a state or county, take a ratio of slaveholding households to total households. This is fourth-grade math, but for some reason most people don't use those figures.

James Oakes wrote an eye-opening book about slavery on small farms and the attitudes of typical Southerners. It's titled, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders --
http://www.amazon.com/Ruling-Race-History-American-Slaveholders/dp/0393317056

Tennessee questionnaires of Confederate veterans about life before the war provide testimony on this topic. As young boys most who came from slaveholding families remembered working in the fields together with slaves. Rather than going to barbeques at Twelve Oaks like the Tarleton twins in GWTW, most Southern boys had experience with slaves as co-workers. They worked with slaves owned by their father or mother, or were hired to work on a farm along with slaves.

If you read letters, newspapers and journals of Southerners written before the war, you know it's quite unusual for anyone to question slavery, let alone oppose it. People accepted slave labor the same as we accept the concept of travel by automobile. That's just how things are done.

Before we leave the subject, people (including myself) have often misunderstood Northern attitudes towards slaves and slavery. Many opposed slavery, but very few wanted emancipated slaves to have civil rights. Most (including Abraham Lincoln) wanted to have the emancipated slaves taken back to Africa or sent to Central America or placed on a reservation in a remote part of the United States. The Lincoln-Douglas debates clearly state that opposition to slavery in the territories was less about opposition to slavery than opposition to being in contact with black people. I cannot quote Lincoln on that because an offensive word not allowed on this website is used.

Here's a provocative book which covers Lincoln's attitude towards slaves in one chapter --
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/books/what_lincoln_believed

Folks, this is not what our children are learning in school. It's not what we were taught, either.