#title Civil War End Brought Suicide
#subtitle Virginian Fired 1<sup>st</sup> Shot at Sumter
#authors Tom Henshaw
#date August 8, 1961
#source The Times-Tribune (Scranton, Pennsylvania), August 8, 1961, Page 8. <[[https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-times-tribune/189118708/][www.newspapers.com]]>
#lang en
#pubdate 2026-01-17T09:23:09
#author Tom Henshaw<br>AP Newsfeatures Writer
#topics racism, history,

They called him the “Peter the Hermit” of secession and Edmund Ruffin filled the role in every way.

He loved his South and hated the North and preached secession as the Peter of an earlier day loved his cross and hated the infidel and preached a crusade.

But Ruffin survived his holocaust and that was his tragedy.

In the early days of the Civil War, Ruffin, a wealthy Virginia planter, traveled the length and breadth of the South, demanding. cajoling and organizing in the name of southern independence.

(He went North but once. In New York his luggage disappeared, thus confirming a longheld opinion of Yankees.)

He showed up in Charles Town. Va., for the hanging of John Brown and, perhaps for a brief moment, the eyes of the fanatic of abolition and the fanatic of Slavery met across, the scaffold.

While in Charles Town, Ruffin came into possession of several pikes with which Brown had armed his followers. He carried one of them throughout his travels. It bore the label:

“Sample of the favors designed for us by our northern brethren.”

On election day, 1860, Ruffin dutifully cast his vote against Lincoln and hopped aboard a train for South Carolina, exiling himself from his native state until it “came to its senses.”

“The defense of the South. I verily believe, is to be secured only through the lead of South Carolina.” he e said. “As old as I am (66), come to join you in that lead.”

He was guest of honor at the South Carolina secession convention. sitting proudly on the dais like an Old Testament prophet, clad in gray homespun, long white hair tumbling to his shoulders. clutching a “John Brown Pike” in his hand.

Ruffin was in Charleston — to “commit a little treason” — when the Fort Sumter crisis came to a head, Pike, carpetbag and musket in hand, he was off to join the Palmetto Guards.

His comrades in arms. young enough to be his grandchildren. accorded him the honor of firing the first shot from their battery at the fort. He was also the first man inside Sumter after its fall.

Ruffin appeared at the battle of Bull Run, carrying his supplies a big round cheese a keg of hard crackers- -and seeking his friends of the Palmetto Guards.

He rode into battle on a cannon and fired a shot that landed in the midst of the retreating Union Army. Later, he surveyed his damage expressed disappointment that he had killed only two Yankees.

After Bull Run, the war became a young man’s game and Ruffin retired to his plantation to watch in virtual helplessness as the world he had ordained collapsed about his head.

One of his three sons was killed in battle and he was forced to evacuate his home when the hated Yankees moved in. They wrecked the place and wrote obscenities on the walls.

For days after Lee’s sur. render, Ruffin brooded and looked about him at a world filled with despised Yankee conquerers. One June morning he retired to his room and penned his last defiance:

“And now with my latest writing and utterance ... I here repeat my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule and the perfidious, malignant and vile Yankee rule ... and the perfidious, malignant and vile Yankee race.”

And then he put a bullet in his head.

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