I’ve been through Aiken, SC, and never given it a thought. Aiken is in western South Carolina, where you’ll find the University of South Carolina-Aiken and the Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame and Museum. Founded in 1835, Aiken was named after William Aiken, President of the South Carolina Railroad. Across the state, Aiken also owned the Jehossee Plantation and the entire island it was on. At one time, Aiken owned over 700 enslaved people, which would have made him the 5th largest slaveholder. Slightly ahead of Louisiana Governor John L. Manning (with 670 slaves and a ways ahead of President Thomas Jefferson with 600.
Fourth place belonged to Meridith Calhoun in Louisiana. Third to sugar producer John Burneside, also of Louisiana. Second place went to cotton producer Dr. Stephen Duncan, who owned over 15 plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana. First place ostensibly belonged to the “King of the rice planters,” Col. Joshua John Ward, who controlled six large rice plantations in South Carolina. Ward had over 1,100 enslaved people, but they were all outdone by an entity one never thinks of as slaveholders… the railroads.
The railroads owned and/or rented more enslaved people than any of the largest plantations. You’d never know it to read their histories. It’s fairly well known that up to 20,000 Chinese workers made up 90% of the workforce that built the Western railroads. At one time, they were paid $26 a month working six days a week. That compared favorably to the black slaves who built the Southern railroads, many of the trains used to transport enslaved people to southern plantations that were bred on the breeding farms in Richmond, VA, Maryland Eastern Shore, and elsewhere…