Georgia opened its prisons to supply free convict labor to this enterprise. The Ku Klux Klan came into existence in the Carolinas to fight the northern railroad because they saw it as a threat to a southern way of life built around black subordination. Klansmen terrorized freedmen working on the line. Hooded terrorists mounted on hooded horses would whip a man, then, piling agony on pain, rub persimmon sticks into his raw back. As Reconstruction ebbed in the South, the holding company acting for the Pennsylvania Railroad made peace with Klan leaders through bribes and the issuance of stock.
Capitalism is infinitely flexible.
The plantation owners who rented their slaves are no more. The Confederacy is gone with the wind. The Pennsylvania Railroad went bankrupt long ago. That leaves the state governments of the southeastern states. Unlike the other parties, they still exist.