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Just a provocative title. This guy spent the last 20 years of his life dedicated to the idea of succession of the southern states. The day after Lee surrendered , he shot himself.
Left this note:
"I here declare my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule -- to all political, social and business connection with the Yankees and to the Yankee race. Would that I could impress these sentiments, in their full force, on every living Southerner and bequeath them to every one yet to be born! May such sentiments be held universally in the outraged and down-trodden South, though in silence and stillness, until the now far-distant day shall arrive for just retribution for Yankee usurpation, oppression and atrocious outrages, and for deliverance and vengeance for the now ruined, subjugated and enslaved Southern States!...And now with my latest writing and utterance, 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 the perfidious, malignant and vile Yankee"
I don't find any memorials/statues of this ultra secessionist. I wonder why? Is he considered a nut among fire eaters, or a mainstream type.
Also, were there any other such secessionists who did the suicide thing after the war rather than live under the Unionists?
__________________ -
"It was a very peculiar time." - Franklin D. Cossitt
Ancestors in USA Army: 6th IA Inf, 11th IL Cav, 1st AL Cav; 122nd NY Inf; 6th MI Cav; 35th MA Inf; 100th IL Inf; 1st CO Inf/Cav; 22nd IN Inf
Also, were there any other such secessionists who did the suicide thing after the war rather than live under the Unionists?
Don't know of any others who went to that extreme, but there were quite a number who left the country.
Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Don't know of any others who went to that extreme, but there were quite a number who left the country.
Most of those who left (at least the famous ones) seem to have come back at some time. I know a number of ex-Confederate officers were in Canada around 1866-68, but they all seem to have come back. Some ended up as mercenaries in places like Egypt.
Despite the tales of a movement to Mexico in late 1865, I've never seen any evidence of how large that was, and Mexico was a really bad place to be at the time.
I do know there was a large ex-patriate Confederate presence in Brazil, and that there still is a city down there that celebrates the connection.
At the time he was accepted by his community as a southern patriot, in fact there is a mild argument amont historians and buffs concerning the possibility he may have fired the first shot at Ft. Sumpter, he was present at one of the batteries, ringing the fort and seems to have been recieved by his battery mates, even though he was a civilian.
There is indeed an interesting contrast between John Browns last written Message and Ruffins.
concerning the possibility he may have fired the first shot at Ft. Sumpter,
I've been convinced that he fired the first shot from a battery that didn't open the bombardment.
Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
The irony of it is, had he been born 35 years earlier, he could have been one of the Founding Fathers. Perhaps a case of being the right cause, wrong war?
Regarding Mexico, I do know Jube Early went down there, but came back after Lee died tearing the ANV vets apart with the Longstreet controversy.
Matt
__________________ Great-Great Grand Nephew of George H. Pfau, 4th NJ Vol Infantry
Last edited by milhistbuff1; 10-16-2006 at 02:02 PM.
In his life he was far more renowned for his agricultural advances rather than his secessionist's stance.
Ruffin in fact could have reduced slavery if more farmers had followed his use of lime on barren soils.
A lot of southern land was unfarmable after a few years, or "played out." Many a plantation owner used his slaves, as much for cutting forests and preparing it for agriculture, as for growing cotton.
He wanted the south to use advanced agricultural practices, so the south would be less dependent on foreign sources of agriculture products.
When the south was an independent nation, he wanted the south to be able to stand on its own feet, owing as little to outside world as possible for its survival.
I suspect he was a secessionist before he was an agriculturalist.
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Edmund Ruffin - the John Brown of the South? 
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