Edmund Ruffin wrapped himself in a Confederate flag and blew his brains out on June 18, 1865.  Sometimes credited with firing the first shot of the ACW at Fort Sumter, he also fired one of the last.

Ruffin's early reputation was that of an agricultural scientist.  Tobacco production had depleted the soil of Virginia.  Ruffin experimented with the use of marl, an earthy deposit consisting of clay and calcium carbonate. Marl countered the depletion of lime, and thus neutralized soil acidity. Ruffin’s trials met with success, and he publicized his findings. 

Increasingly Ruffin was drawn into politics.  By the 1850s, Ruffin had come to embody Southern planters’ investment in, and dependence on, chattel slavery. Ruffin’s family held more than two hundred enslaved African Americans in 1860, and he became convinced that the South would eventually have to secede in order to maintain its social and economic structure.

John Brown’s raid on the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859 alerted southerners to the extent of pro-abolitionist sentiment in the North. Ruffin traveled to witness Brown’s execution and later purchased several of the pikes Brown and his men had carried to send to southern governors as a reminder of the intent of abolitionists.  If you ever visited Don Tharpe's Warrenton museum, he had one of these pikes on display.

In Charleston, on April 12, 1861, Ruffin joined South Carolina troops as they initiated the Civil War by firing cannons on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. There are several theories about who actually fired the first shot of the war, but most scholars agree that the person who fired the first shot is unknown. Ruffin is believed, however, to have fired “the first shot” from Morris Island after the fusillade had already begun. Either way, his presence in Charleston afforded him a hero’s status in the South. 

During the war, Ruffin initially continued to rally Southern troops and to travel to battle sites but soon felt compelled to remain behind. Physical limitations and Union troops’ occupation of his properties eventually forced him to retreat to Redmoor, a farm in Amelia County. 

 On June 18, 1865, while staying at Redmoor, Ruffin went up to his room with a rifle and a forked stick. He was called away to greet visitors at the front door. After they left, Ruffin returned to write a final diary entry:

And now with my latest writing and utterance, and with what will [be] near to my latest breath, I here repeat, & would willingly proclaim, my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule—to all political, social and business connections with Yankees, & to the perfidious, malignant, & vile Yankee race.