JUNE 17, 1865:
Edmund Ruffin (born
1794), the man who ceremonially fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, takes his
own life by blowing his brains out with a shotgun. A sharpshooter, Ruffin,
during the Civil War had declared his “unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule --- to
all political, social, & business connection with Yankees, & to the
perfidious, malignant, & vile Yankee race.”
To
many people, north and south, even during the war the fire-eating Ruffin was a
bad joke who sought to hold on to an irrecoverable, nay, fantasized, past.
Ruffin,
who dramatically wrapped himself in a Confederate flag before pressing the gun
barrel to his forehead, was a self-taught planter who abjured all forms of
centralized government with a passion bordering on the insane.
His
last act provided Confederate romanticists and Lost Cause believers with a
ready-made martyr.
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