The Diary of Major David Gavin offers an amazing window into the everyday lives of the typical pre-Civil War South Carolina planter and his relationships with his neighbors and his slaves (note that in the diaries, the word "slave" is never mentioned ).   By the mid-1850's South Carolina's lowcountry planters had become dangerously dependent on farming with slave labor, and the shifting sands were evident. 

While Major Gavin regularly attended slave sales and clearly viewed his negroes as property, he appears to have had some appreciation and compassion for them.  At least twice, he dismissed his white overseers for laziness and fighting with the negroes.  This is his May 1859 account of an incident involving the overseer's wife:

"Mrs. ______  has been cutting high capors this evening, as soon as I left the house or yard she fell aboard of one of my little negroes, Rachael, and beat her unmercifully, with her fist and hands.  She has been makeing a fuss on the place ever since she has been here, she commenced first with the large negroes and now without any cause has beat this little negro...I see plainly  I cannot put up with her conduct without a great alterration for the better,  and that quick...if a negro was to deserve correction, and I got it only from her or from [Mr. ___] under influence (as I see he is) I should not believe it, She is a regular agent of the Evil one, and studies no interest but his..."

Big Jim and Mike are mentioned frequently as trusted workers.  In one passage,  Gavin mentions his remorse over an altercation with Big Jim,  admitting (at least in his diary)  that he was wrong and Jim was right.

I've transcribed the story of Friday,  who remembers the Revolutionary War...

Story of Friday

Recorded Saturday, September the 13th 1856. 

My old man Friday died this morning before day of dropsy in the chest, I noticed it long ago, and for about a month he has been so bad that he could not help himself, Mike nursed him night and day assisted by Big Jim and his daughter Mary. 

I have had him in possession since February 1843, he carried my keys and attended to feeding the horses and attending to my cattle, hogs and stock generally as long as he was able, and a great manager of hogs he was, and could remember more about the stock than I could;  only yesterday he was directing Mike that the young hogs must be spayed next week, and had thread carried to him to see if there was enough of the right kind.

After he was unable to do any thing much but ride after the hogs he noticed the yard and the little negroes and would remind me of many little matters to be attended to.

He served my Grandfather and grandmother Gavin, my father not haveing come into possession of him because he died in 1838 before his mother who died in 1842.  His (Friday's) mother was my grandmother Gavin's cook and died in Perry Co, Miss. 1843 or 4. 

He seemed like a connecting link between me and grand-father and grand-mother Gavin, for he could talk to and tell me of the actings and doing of them and others of the olden time, about the connections of the family, their names and where they lived and moved to or from. 

He says he was large enough to open the gate for people in the Revolutionary War, was at the defeat of Gen. Sumpter (at Fishing creek) during the revolution, that his master had to run, and his mother Chloe got an old woman to claim herself and children to keep the tories and Brittish from takeing them. 

By these circumstances I suppose he was over eighty years old considerably.  He was older than my father and if he had lived until now he would have been about 77 years old.  He has lived a good number of years more than I expect, but even that is short or appears a short time, but few attain four score years.  Yet he must have been over.  He told me after dinner yesterday he could not live through the night."