Edmund Ruffin

Edmund Ruffin

Edmund Ruffin (January 5, 1794 – June 17, 1865) was a farmer and slaveholder, a Confederate soldier, and an 1850s political activist. He advocated states' rights, secession, and slavery and was described by opponents as one of the Fire-Eaters. He was an ardent supporter of the Confederacy and a longstanding enemy of the North. He argued for secession for many years before the Civil War. In 1859 he attended the execution of John Brown at Charles Town, purchasing a number of the pikes with which Brown had planned to arm slaves as part of his abortive slave revolt, which started and finished at Harper's Ferry earlier that year. Ruffin sent one to the governors of all the slave-holding states as proof of violent Northern enmity against the South and slavery. He was in South Carolina during the period immediately before its secession during the election of 1860 (according to Swanberg, because his fellow Virginians found him too extreme), writing to his son, "The time since I have been here has been the happiest of my life." Because of his strong secessionist views and the widely held belief that he fired the first shot of the Battle of Fort Sumter, Ruffin is credited as "firing the first shot of the Civil War."

Pre-war life

Ruffin was born in Prince George County, Virginia. He was a descendant of William Randolph, the progenitor of the Randolph family. He was educated privately until studying at the College of William & Mary in 1810-1812, before being dismissed from the college. Ruffin was more interested in literature, and his future wife, Susan Travis, than his schoolwork.

He was a farmer and agronomist. For a time, he was editor of the Farmers Register and investigated at some length the possibility of using lime to raise pH in peat soils to improve agricultural productivity. During the pre-war years, he was interested in the origin of bogs and published several detailed descriptions of the Dismal and Blackwater Swamps. Ruffin would later be better known for his contributions to agriculture and not so much for his claim to have fired the first shot of the Civil War. Specifically, he aided the Southern economy by proposing new and ingenious ways to rotate and fertilize tobacco crops such that fields could be used over and over to grow the valuable crop.

In 1860, Ruffin wrote Anticipations of the Future, to Serve as Lessons for the Present Time. In it, he pictured what he apprehended would be the result of the election of Republican candidates. He predicted an American Civil War in 1868 following the re-election of President William H. Seward, which would ultimately result in a victory for Southern states. Although most of his predictions were wrong, Ruffin correctly predicted^{[citation needed]} that the war would start with an attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

Civil War

As the sectional hostilities which led to the Civil War grew in the 1850s, Ruffin left Virginia for South Carolina, as he was angry that Virginia had not been the first state to secede from the Union. Ruffin fired one of the first shots on Fort Sumter. He was also the first one to enter Fort Sumter after it fell.^{[citation needed]}

After the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House in 1865, Ruffin decided to commit suicide. After contemplating the idea for weeks, he resolved that his death would neither offend God nor harm his family, but would relieve his children from the burden of caring for him. He timed his death so his oldest son would be at home to bury him, but allowing enough time that the suicide would not overshadow a nephew’s upcoming wedding.

On June 17, 1865, Ruffin went up to his study with a rifle and a forked stick. He paused to add to his diary a final malediction against "the perfidious Yankee people." Then he was called away to greet visitors who had arrived at the front door. After they left, Ruffin returned to his study and wrote a final diary entry:

And now with my latest writing and utterance, and with what will [be] near to my latest breath, I here repeat, & would willingly proclaim, my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule—to all political, social and business connections with Yankees, & to the perfidious, malignant, & vile Yankee race.

Immediately after writing this, Ruffin put the rifle muzzle in his mouth and used the forked stick to manipulate the trigger. The percussion cap went off without firing the rifle, and the noise alerted Ruffin's daughter-in-law. But by the time she and his son reached his room, Ruffin had already reloaded the rifle and fired a fatal shot.

Works

• Slavery and free labor, described and compared / by Edmund Ruffin. Accessed December 8, 2006.

• Ruffin, Edmund (1852). An essay on calcareous manures. Richmond, Va.: J.W. Randolph. http://books.google.com/?id=LTuec1m0qvcC&dq=%22Ruffin%22+%22An+Essay+on+Calcareous+Manures%22+. 

• Ruffin, Edmund (1989) [1856-1865] (3 v.). The diary of Edmund Ruffin. Edited, with an introd. and notes, by William Kauffman Scarborough. With a foreword by Avery Craven.. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0807109487. 

• Ruffin, Edmund (1857?). The political economy of slavery, or, The institution considered in regard to its influence on public wealth and the general welfare. Washington: L. Towers. http://www.archive.org/details/poleconomyslave00ruffrich. Retrieved 2006-12-14. 

• Ruffin, Edmund (1860). Anticipations of the Future, to Serve as Lessons for the Present Time: In the Form of Extracts of Letters from an English Resident in the United States, to the London Times (sic), from 1864 to 1870. J.W. Randolph. http://books.google.com/?id=LDzzwhDEPQ0C&dq=Anticipations+of+the+Future,+to+Serve+as+Lesson+for+the+Present+Time&printsec=frontcover. Retrieved 2008-11-30. 

References

• Detzer, David R. (2001). Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston and the Beginning of the Civil War. New York: Harcourt 

• Mitchell, Betty L. (1981). Edmund Ruffin, a Biography. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 

• Scheter, Barnet (2005). The Devil's Own Work. New York, NY: Walker & Company 
• Swanberg, A.W. (1960). First Blood:The Story of Fort Sumter. New York: Longmans 

Further reading

• Allmendinger, David F. (1990). Ruffin : family and reform in the Old South. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195044150. 

• Craven, Avery (1982) [1932]. Edmund Ruffin, southerner : a study in secession (Reprint. Originally published: New York : D. Appleton, 1932. ed.). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0807101044. 

• Mathew, William M. (1988). Edmund Ruffin and the crisis of slavery in the Old South : the failure of agricultural reform. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0820310115. 

• Mitchell, Betty L. (circa 1981). Edmund Ruffin, a biography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253308763

External links

• Edmund Ruffin in Encyclopedia Virginia
• "Edmund Ruffin". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=913. Retrieved 2009-04-10. 

• Brugger, Robert J. (Summer, 1991). "Redmoor Farewell: the Life and Death of Edmund Ruffin". Virginia Quarterly Review 67 (3). http://www.vqronline.org/articles/1991/summer/brugger-redmoor-farewell/. Retrieved 2006-12-13. 
• The Early Career of Edmund Ruffin, 1810-1840