Edmund Ruffin
Virginia planter and slaveholder · United States · On the map · Writers · Lived 1794 to 1865 · aged 71
Edmund Ruffin III was an American planter, politician, scientist, and activist best known as an early advocate for secession of the Southern slave states from the United States. He served in the Virginia Senate from 1823 to 1827.
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In the three decades before the American Civil War he published polemics in support of states' rights and the protection of chattel slavery, earning notoriety as one of the so-called Fire-Eaters. Ruffin was present at the Battle of Fort Sumter in April 1861 and fired one cannon shot at the fort. This gave rise to the legend that Ruffin fired the first shot of the Civil War. Ruffin did enlist as a Confederate soldier despite his advanced age. When the war ended in defeat in 1865, he died of suicide rather than accept what he called "Yankee rule."
