D. Wyatt Aiken
Confederate Army officer (1828-1887)
David Wyatt Aiken (March 17, 1828 – April 6, 1887) was a , Confederate army officer during the American Civil War and a reconstruction era five-term United States Congressman from South Carolina.
Biography
Early life
Aiken was born in Winnsboro, South Carolina, and received his early education under private tutors. He attended the Mount Zion Institute in Winnsboro and graduated from South Carolina College in Columbia in 1849. He taught college for two years before marrying Mattie Gaillard in 1852 and engaging in agricultural pursuits, owning a plantation and traveling extensively in Europe and throughout the United States, where he spoke in defense of slavery to large crowds. He became the editor of the Winnsboro News and Herald, and was married a second time to Miss Smith of Abbeville, where Aiken settled and continued to farm. In 1855, Aiken became a founding member of the State Agricultural Society.
He was a slave owner, and owned the Smith family slave plantation after marrying Smith, which held about 40 slaves.
Civil War, Reconstruction
In 1858 Aiken attended a political convention in Mobile, Alabama, and began speaking publicly in favor of secession. With South Carolina's secession and the advent of the Civil War, Aiken enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private in the 7th South Carolina Infantry. He was later appointed adjutant of the regiment and in 1862 was elected its colonel.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1151450. VIAF identifies the subject as 76133680. The Library of Congress control number is no2008113325. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1828, 1887, 1849 and 1852.
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This entry incorporates text from “D. Wyatt Aiken” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.