ESSEX was his name, but to all the children on the plantation he was "Unc' Essick." When I first knew him, Unc' Essick was a very important personage on my father's plantation. I was a little late arriving, being the eleventh of a family of twelve children, and was born some years before the outbreak of the Civil War. As far back as I can remember, Unc' Essick was my father's foreman, general director - "right-hand man." On many of the Southern plantations the foreman was called "The Driver," and he was the driver literally. He carried his heavy whip, and did not fail to lay it on the backs of his indolent or disobedient fellow-slaves. Some of these drivers were the most merciless task-masters, and some were pitilessly cruel. My father would have none of that. His foreman was not allowed to touch one of his fellows. His business was to counsel, encourage, direct, and lead the others. Every morning he received his orders from my father, and every night he made his report. Intelligent readers know that it was against the law to teach a slave to read or write. Essex could neither read nor write, but I remember having heard my father say that the old man's reports were marvelous for accuracy and detail. In ante-bellum days there were in the middle section of South Carolina, and particularly in the coast counties-the rice-growing section-many plantations measuring many thousands of acres. On many of these slaves were numbered by the hundred; on a few, there were more than a thousand. Some of the "large slave-owners," that is to say, the owners of more than a thousand, did not know their own negroes. In such cases, master and slave came in touch with each other only through the overseer, or driver.
About the Author: John George Clinkscales In the Piedmont section of my State, now, since the decline of the rice industry, the most prosperous, there were few large plantations, and comparatively few slaves. The attachment between master and slave was, in some cases, very strong and very beautiful. My father's plantation, "Broadway," lay between Johnson's Creek and Little River on the one side, and Penny's Creek on the other, and in Abbeville District, now Abbeville County, the home of Secession. In the entire tract there were only twelve hundred acres, and on it only one hundred and ten slaves. Their owner knew them all by name.