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Edmund Ruffin

Edmund Ruffin (January 5, 1794 – June 17, 1865) was born in Prince George County, Virginia. He was a descendant of William Randolph, the progenitor of the Randolph family. Ruffin 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. Ruffin was an ardent supporter of the Confederacy and an enemy of the North for its intrusion and invasion of his beloved Virginia.

Contents

Early Agronomist

In addition to his notoriety as a Civil War fire-eater, Ruffin was also a farmer and agronomist. For a time he was editor of the "Farmers Register" and investigated at some length the possibilities of using lime to raise pH in peat soils to improve agricultural productivity. During these pre-Civil War years he was interested in the origin of bogs and published several detailed descriptions of the Dismal and Blackwater Swamps.

Author

In 1860, Ruffin wrote Anticipations Of The Future, To Serve As Lessons For The Present Time. In it, he pictures what he apprehends will be the result of the election of Republican candidates. He predicted an American Civil War in 1868 following the re-election of President William Seward which ultimately results in a victory for southern states. Although most of his predictions are wrong, Ruffin did correctly predict that an American Civil War would start with an attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

Civil War Role

As the sectional hostilities which led to the American 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 claimed that he fired the first shot on Fort Sumter. His story has been widely believed, but Lieutenant Henry S. Farley, commanding a battery of two mortars on James Island fired the first shot at 4:30 A.M., April 12, 1861. Ruffin did fire a shot at Fort Sumter later that morning (Detzer 2001, pp. 269-271).

After the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, this fiery Southerner penned these famous last words in his diary:

I here declare my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule -- to all political, social and business connection with the Yankees and to the Yankee race. Would that I could impress these sentiments, in their full force, on every living Southerner and bequeath them to every one yet to be born! May such sentiments be held universally in the outraged and down-trodden South, though in silence and stillness, until the now far-distant day shall arrive for just retribution for Yankee usurpation, oppression and atrocious outrages, and for deliverance and vengeance for the now ruined, subjugated and enslaved Southern States!
...And now with my latest writing and utterance, and with what will be near my latest breath, I here repeat and would willingly proclaim my unmitigated hatred to yankee rule--to all political, social and business connections with Yankees, and the perfidious, malignant and vile Yankee race.

Ruffin could not get over the loss of his native South in the Civil War, nor could he bear the thought of living in a South ruled by an invader and took his own life, via gunshot to the head, soon after Lee's surrender to Grant.

Note, this view is debated by his descendants. According to (Mitchell 1981), Ruffin was concerned with his uselessness both to his native state and to his family, and committed suicide to avoid being a burden to either.

Significance

Ruffin would later be known for his contributions to agriculture and not so much for firing the first shot of the Civil War, (though history has judged him more for the latter). 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.

Because of his rabid secessionist views and the widely held belief that he fired the first shot of the Battle of Fort Sumter, Ruffin is sometimes credited as "firing the first shot of the Civil War."

Works

  • 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. 

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 .

External links

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
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