Edmund Ruffin of Virginia was sixty-five at the time of
John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry. Years before he had
made his reputation as the South’s leading agricultural
reformer. Now he was regarded as one of his region’s foremost
agitators for secession. On December 2, 1859, he witnessed
Brown's execution in Charles Town, Virginia. In a borrowed
overcoat of the Virginia Military Institute, he stood
shoulder to shoulder with the institute’s cadets, who
were more than a little amused to have an old man with
shaggy hair temporarily join their ranks. Afterward Ruffin
arranged to have one of Brown’s pikes (intended for the
use of slave insurgents) sent to each governor of a slaveholding
state, with the label “Sample of the favors designed
for us by our Northern Brethren.”
Ruffin welcomed the start of sectional hostilities
in April 1861. Allegedly he fired one of the first rebel
shots at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, this time
as an honorary member of the Palmetto Guards. Yet the
war that began so hopefully for Ruffin left him bitter
at the end. With his Virginia plantation despoiled,
his slaves set free, and the Southern cause lost, Ruffin
loaded a gun and shot himself to death.
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