Of course slave owners were victims, but not in the way people, including supremacists, think. They were victims of their own brainwashing, religion, inculcation, racism, and self-centered ethnocentric worldview. If you want some background I'd suggest a book I read 40 some years ago called The Peculiar Institution. https://www.amazon.com/Peculiar-Institution-Slavery-Ante-Bellum-South/dp/0679723072/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+peculiar+institution&qid=1695854310&sr=8-1

So what is the problem today where so many are eager to defend slave owners and one of the worst institutions in history? The problem is one of deep seated knowledge of wrongdoing that cannot be undone. It is too difficult to own up to this abuse and murder — too difficult to turn the whole mechanism of thinking and identity around and face the truth. There is a very big need for certain people to assert their supposed superiority, and it stems from how they are psychologically conditioned to think and relate to other human beings. Hate runs very, very deep and it stems from fear.