40 Facts About Edmund Ruffin

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.

Edmund Ruffin served in the Virginia Senate from 1823 to 1827.

Edmund Ruffin did enlist as a Confederate soldier despite his advanced age.

Edmund Ruffin is known for his pioneering work in methods to preserve and improve soil productivity.

Edmund Ruffin recommended crop rotation and amendments to restore soils exhausted from tobacco monoculture.

Edmund Ruffin published essays and, in 1832, a book on his findings for improving soils.

Edmund Ruffin has since become known as "the father of soil science" in the United States.

Edmund Ruffin's father was George Ruffin and Edmund was named after his grandfather, Edmund Ruffin, who represented Prince George County in the Virginia House of Delegates during the American Revolutionary War.

Edmund Ruffin received a private education suitable to his class, then attended the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

The couple moved to a plantation that Edmund Ruffin inherited from his namesake grandfather, at Coggin's Point, along the James River in Prince George County, which was noted as the departure point of Benedict Arnold after he switched allegiances and raided along the James River in 1781.

Edmund Ruffin enlisted as a private in the Virginia Militia during the War of 1812, and served as secretary of the 4th Virginia Infantry, but did not experience battle.

Edmund Ruffin owned several plantations including Coggins Point and Shellbanks in Prince George.

The 1850 census was the first with separate slave schedules, and by then Edmund Ruffin owned 84 enslaved people in Prince George county, and 41 enslaved people in Hanover County, Virginia.

An educated man, Edmund Ruffin was interested in agricultural science but did not like farming or supervising slaves and in 1835 moved from his plantation in Prince George to the City of Petersburg becoming an absentee landowner, leaving the day to day management of his plantations and supervision of slaves to overseers.

In 1843, Edmund Ruffin purchased another plantation, Marlbourne, in Hanover County near Richmond, in the Virginia Tidewater and moved there from Petersburg.

Tobacco had long been cultivated on the land and the soil was exhausted, so Edmund Ruffin became a serious agronomist and a pioneer in promoting conservation and soil rejuvenation.

Edmund Ruffin became one of a circle of intellectuals who worked to change various aspects of Southern life.

Edmund Ruffin's colleagues included Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, George Frederick Holmes, James Henry Hammond, and William Gilmore Simms.

For example, Edmund Ruffin edited writings of William Byrd of Westover Plantation The Westover Manuscripts, containing a history of the dividing line twixt Virginia and North Carolina: a Journey to the Land of Eden AD 1733 and a Progress to the Mines.

Edmund Ruffin did serious studies of the possibility of using lime to raise pH in peat soils.

Edmund Ruffin presented a paper, later expanded into an article for American Farmer and eventually into the highly influential book An Essay on Calcareous Manures.

Edmund Ruffin explained how applications of calcareous earths had reduced soil acidity and improved yields of mixed crops of corn and wheat on his land, which had been worn out by two centuries of tobacco farming.

Some now consider Edmund Ruffin better known for his substantive contributions to agriculture, rather than his claim to have fired the first shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter.

Edmund Ruffin strongly supported slavery and what he considered the Southern way of life.

Edmund Ruffin became increasingly outspoken as sectional hostilities heightened in the 1850s.

In 1859, Edmund Ruffin traveled to attend the execution of John Brown at Charles Town, Virginia, following the abolitionist's abortive slave revolt at Harper's Ferry earlier that year.

Edmund Ruffin sent a pike to each of the governors of the slave-holding states, except Delaware, as proof of violent Northern enmity against the South and slavery.

In 1860, Edmund Ruffin published his book, Anticipations of the Future, to Serve as Lessons for the Present Time.

Edmund Ruffin predicted an American civil war in 1868 that would follow the re-election of President William H Seward, and predicted that it would ultimately result in a victory for Southern states.

Edmund Ruffin was the first person to enter Fort Sumter after it fell to Southern forces.

In June 1864, after the Army of the Potomac under General Ulysses S Grant stealthily crossed the James River into Prince George over a hastily constructed pontoon bridge a few miles east of Beechwood at Flowerdew Hundred, Ruffin allegedly escaped capture by hiding under a load of hay in a wagon driven by one of his slaves.

Edmund Ruffin fled west to the relative safety of another son's plantation home, Redmoor, in Confederate-held territory west of Petersburg in Amelia County.

Several of Edmund Ruffin's plantations were occupied and plundered by Union forces during the war.

Increasingly despondent after the surrender of Robert E Lee at Appomattox Court House in 1865, along with the other surrenders that were to follow, Ruffin decided to commit suicide.

On June 18,1865, while staying with his son and daughter-in-law at Redmoor in Amelia County, Edmund Ruffin went up to his room with a rifle and a forked stick.

Edmund Ruffin was called away to greet visitors at the front door.

Edmund Ruffin wrapped himself in a Confederate flag, put the rifle muzzle in his mouth and used the forked stick to manipulate the trigger.

However, by the time she and his son reached his room, Edmund Ruffin had re-primed the rifle with another cap and fired a fatal shot.

Edmund Ruffin is often called the "father of soil science" in the United States, and his writings have been influential in soil conservation.

Edmund Ruffin had long proven himself to be a dedicated diarist.