 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 travelling extensively in Europe and throughout the United States.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.