Seventy-one year-old South Carolina native Edmund Ruffin, one of the most vocal of secessionist "fireeaters" and the man often credited with firing the first shot at Fort Sumter in 1861, shot himself to death in his study after breakfast at his plantation home of "Redmoor" in Amelia County, Virginia. His final diary entry condemned the "perfidious, malignant, & vile Yankee race." (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Eric H. Walther, The Fire-Eaters (Baton Rouge, LA: University of Louisiana Press, 1992), 229-231.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Personal
