Edmund Ruffin
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Edmund Ruffin (January 5, 1794 – June 18, 1865) was a farmer and slaveholder from Virginia, a Confederate soldier, and an 1850s political activist. He advocated states' rights and secession and was described by opponents as one of the fire-eaters. Ruffin was was an ardent supporter of the Confederacy and an enemy of the North for its intrusion and invasion of his beloved Virginia. Ruffin was born in Prince George County, Virginia. He was also a descendant of William Randolph, the progenitor of the Randolph family.
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. According to historical evidence and historians who are experts on the Civil War, Ruffin was given the privilege of firing the first shot against Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 at the outset of the Civil War.
Despite 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.
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.
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[edit] Later Life
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. 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.
Because he was attributed with firing the first shot of the Battle of Fort Sumter, Ruffin is sometimes credited as "firing the first shot of the Civil War."
[edit] 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.
- Ruffin, Edmund [1856-1865] (1989). The diary of Edmund Ruffin. Edited, with an introd. and notes, by William Kauffman Scarborough. With a foreword by Avery Craven. (3 v.), 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. Retrieved on 2006-12-14.
[edit] External links
- Brugger, Robert J. (Summer, 1991). "Redmoor Farewell: the Life and Death of Edmund Ruffin". Virginia Quarterly Review 67 (3). Retrieved on 2006-12-13.
[edit] Further reading
- Allmendinger, David F. (1990). Ruffin : family and reform in the Old South. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195044150.
- Craven, Avery [1932] (1982). Edmund Ruffin, southerner : a study in secession, Reprint. Originally published: New York : D. Appleton, 1932., 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.
