What caught my attention was your statement that most slaves lived on large planatations. Others may speculate about what this meant in terms of affection for masters. Those are opinions which anyone may entertain. I don't wish to comment on those topics.

Having reviewed all Confederate veteran questionnaires for middle Tennessee, I hope it's okay to offer information from them. Most were in their teens when the war began. As mentioned, even boys from non-slaveholding households worked side by side with slaves in the fields. Questionnaires answered by men who had lived on large plantations and enjoyed a life of leisure in antebellum times are quite rare.

You are correct about the slaveholding percentages in Tennessee. According to the 1860 census, total free population in the state was 834,082; total slave population was 275,719. The more meaningful numbers are 149,335 free households and 36,844 slaveowners. Assuming one slaveowner per family, which will be true in all but a few cases, percentage of slaveholding is about 25% in Tennessee. It's higher in most Deep South states, but you're right for Tennessee.

The average distribution of slaves per slaveholder in Tennessee would be over seven. I confused average with mean, so you're right again. The number of small slaveholdings in the state was well over fifty percent. For instance, in Tennessee, only forty-seven citizens owned one hundred or more slaves. On the other hand, 21,715 of 36,844 slaveholders owned one to five slaves. For that matter, over twenty-one percent of all Tennessee slaveowners (7,820 of 36,844) reported one slave only.

This may say more about Tennessee slaveowners than it does about their slaves. However, I cannot think of a way in which anyone can imagine that most slaves in Tennessee lived on large plantations. In 1860 none of the forty-seven large plantation owners mentioned above owned as many as five hundred slaves. Anyone who toured the state just before the war would have noticed that the great majority of slaves lived on smaller farms and plantations.