Could somebody recommend me a book where slavery and politics aren't the main theme? I understand that it was an important part of the Southern culture at the time, but I'm more interested in the daily lives of people.
Not always in the foreground, but slavery was an everyday part of southern life. ‘Any southerners saw slaves everyday.
Other than a focus that isn’t slavery, what are you looking for?
I'm going to go ahead and point out that the glaring problem with your expressed interest in the daily lives of 'people' in the antebellum south is that slaves were, in fact, people.
I'm a fan of the book Self-Taught: African-American Education in Slavery and Freedom by Heather Andrea Williams. While it's virtually impossible for a book to discuss the Antebellum South without including politics and chattel slavery, Williams' book focuses on the battles and wars around self-education. There are several chapters that get into people's daily lives and how they sought out education or how they limited others' access to it.