I had a sociology professor who taught us about Harriett Jacobs as a counter to racist claims like this (because apparently students now have to have evidence to back up why slavery was bad. That’s where we are.)

Harriet Jacobs lived in a crawl space for seven years after escaping her enslavers until she could make it to the north. I wish I could find the video we watched, but it basically said it was so small she couldn’t even stand up. That would be considered torture in other circumstances. And imagine living in a crawl space with no heat in the winter or AC in the summer, in the South? But it was still preferable to being property.