A Confederate Fire-eater (Article 107)

“I here repeat, and would willingly proclaim, my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule ….. and to the malignant and vile Yankee race.” -  Edmund Ruffin

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He was a Virginian by birth and was a descendant of William Randolph, one of the early colonial founders of the Commonwealth. Randolph and his wife have been referred to as the “Adam and Eve of Virginia because their descendants included many of that state’s aristocrats including Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall (First Chief Justice), General Robert E. Lee, and… Edmund Ruffin.  Ruffin was a slave-holder with several plantations and had advocated secession from the United States for over thirty years before the Civil War.  He resented Northern attempts to interfere with slavery, and in the 1850s, he vociferously campaigned to promote the necessity for secession and, if necessary, a civil war to forever eliminate Yankee “meddling” in Southern affairs. His rhetoric was so intense that he was labeled a “Fire-Eater” in his home state; so, he found a more receptive audience in South Carolina. He began to spend more time there, encouraging that state’s legislature to secede and to seize federal installations in Charleston Harbor. At one point he wrote to one of his sons that he was happier in South Carolina than he had been for some time.

Ruffin was already well known in the South, however, for another, but more progressive reason. He was well educated and became an acclaimed agronomist who had spent years researching methods to increase the production of tobacco crops. Over the years the land had become less fertile as tobacco was over farmed. Ruffin experimented with soil additions and crop rotations which would replenish the land and his discoveries re-invigorated the tobacco industry. While both Virginia and South Carolina planters were dependent on slave labor and large parts of their economies were dependent on tobacco, Ruffin seemed to find South Carolinians more willing to adapt to his agricultural recommendations. Plus, they seemed more accepting of his extreme views on secession (and the need for Civil War) than his Virginia neighbors. So, he fit right in.

He frequently warned that northern interests would encourage slave insurrections and proposed that a war could be quickly won if initiated from Virginia with strikes into Washington DC, Pennsylvania and New York. He believed that the southern born officers and enlisted men in the small Union army would leave their posts and the decimated Federal military force would collapse. These were not just idle thoughts, as Ruffin wrote a novel titled, “Anticipations of the Future, to Serve as lessons for the Present” in which several Southern states formed a loose confederation after the election of a Republican President. In his book he named William Seward, former Governor of New York and an abolitionist, as the new (fictional) Republican President; likely because the real future Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, was not considered a possibility by him at the time. He wrote that a militia force of combined Southern states attacked Washington DC and several eastern ports; after which the United States Government capitulated and recognized each state as independent. The book was widely read in the South and by enough people in the North to generate some concern there. The publication of the novel came soon after John Brown’s failed abolitionist raid at the Harpers Ferry Arsenal in 1859, which Brown intended as the start of a slave insurrection. Ruffin attended the trial and the execution of Brown and purchased some of the weapons Brown had used; which he then sent to the governors of each Southern state as a reminder of Northern intentions to interfere with slavery. Ruffin absolutely expected that Northern politicians would continue to attempt to contain slavery, while he, and many Southern politicians wanted to instead expand slavery to other territories and states. He believed, and publicly advocated, that civil war would be necessary to permanently separate slave states from the Northern free states.

And Ruffin did finally get his War!

While he claimed to have fired the first shot at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, he did not. He did, however, fire an early round and was said to be almost uncontrollably jubilant as it struck the fort. He was not just a verbal advocate for war, he wanted to fight; and, at age 67, joined the Virginia militia as a private. He was in uniform at the first battle at Bull Run (Manassas) which was a decisive Confederate victory; however, with his advanced age and several ailments, Ruffin soon found himself convalescing at the plantation of one of his sons. He stayed active in the war effort by sending hundreds of letters encouraging southern support for the Confederate cause and continued to caution against slave revolts.

Ruffin was pleased with the South’s early victories over Union forces and was confident the war would soon be won. But then, in mid-1862, the Union began to make progress, and in September, President Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation. With that, Ruffin’s world began to change. His plantations were seized, his slaves began to stream into Union lines, and then came the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863. He also lost a grandson and a son who died fighting for the Confederacy. Although his entries became more morose, he continued to make daily and deeply personal entries in a journal which has been preserved. When Robert E. Lee surrendered in April 1865, followed by the capture of Jefferson Davis in May, the combination of outrage and despondency Ruffin went through is clear in his precise journal entries. On June 18, 1865, Ruffin was staying with one of his sons and wrote this (in part) in his journal:  “And now with my last writing….. 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 to the perfidious, malignant, and vile Yankee race.”

As he wrote the last word, some friends came to visit and Ruffin met with them for over an hour and then returned to his room. He took the long rifle he had placed earlier beside his desk, put a Confederate flag over his lap, used a forked stick to help reach the trigger, and committed suicide.

Edmund Ruffin was no hero. He advocated for slavery as his right to own other human beings and to treat them as he wished, and he pushed for war against his neighboring states, knowing full well that many southern boys would die in the conflict. Then, in the end, he did not have the courage to live with the consequences of his actions.

He was on the wrong side of a historical sea change.