Ruffin, Edmund

Ruffin, Edmund

(rŭf`ĭn), 1794–1865, American agriculturist, one of the Southern fire-eatersfire-eaters,
in U.S. history, term applied by Northerners to proslavery extremists in the South in the two decades before the Civil War. Edmund Ruffin, Robert B. Rhett, and William L. Yancey were the most notable of the group.
..... Click the link for more information. , b. Prince George co., Va. His interest in improving impoverished land led him to become a pioneer in soil chemistry. Against much opposition he advocated the benefits of marl and proved its value. His arguments were propounded in An Essay on Calcareous Manures (1832, 5th rev. ed. 1852). He founded (1833) and edited until 1842 an excellent agricultural publication, the Farmers' Register. An ardent supporter of states' rights and secession, he left Virginia for the more congenial political milieu of South Carolina, where on Apr. 12, 1861, he was given the privilege of firing the first shot against Fort Sumter. With the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox he committed suicide.

Bibliography

See his Diary, ed. by W. K. Scarborough (Vol. I, 1972).

Ruffin, Edmund

(1794–1865) agriculturist, author; born in Prince George County, Va. Suspended from William and Mary College for bad grades, and bored by the War of 1812, he returned to Coggin's Point, the family estate. There he discovered that depleted soils were acidic and that the high-calcium "marl" could replenish them. In 1832 he published An Essay on Calcareous Manures, which grew through five editions to 500 pages. He published the Farmer's Register from 1833 to 1843 and promoted local agricultural organizations as well as such "scientific" farming practices as crop rotation, fertilizing, and proper plowing and drainage. An ardent defender of slavery, he was a major advocate of southern secession; he wrote The Political Economy of Slavery (1858) and Anticipations of the Future (1860) about an independent South. A member of the Palmetto Guards of Charleston, S.C., he is often credited with firing the first shot on Fort Sumter (although the evidence is doubtful). He spent most of the war protecting his estates from "Yankees." In 1865, when the Confederacy collapsed, he killed himself.