Who were the richest slave owners?

Answer 1

Wade Hampton of South Carolina was considered to be the richest man in the south. His family had pioneered a plantation in the upstate of South Carolina and Wade, as heir, had reached that status before buying additional land to establishing a cotton plantation in Mississippi. To start that plantation he sent between one and two hundred slaves from his South Carolina holdings. Less than one per cent of slaveowners owned more than 200 slaves, but they owned over half of the total of slaves. There were a few "prominent" families in each southern state which had over several generations acquired large land holdings and a large slave labor work force. As rich people have in every time and place, they exerted disproportionate political power, because, after all, money talks.