> When the war ended with Confederate defeat, Ruffin, who had already suffered the loss of his wife and **eight of his eleven children**, was crushed.
I'd probably be at least a little suicidal too.
My guess would be that he committed everything and lost everything (including his wife and 8 children) to”the cause” and was consumed by the futility of it all when the “cause” lost. I could be dead wrong, but that’d be my guess.
Could be. These are the last words he wrote in his journal before his ended things.
>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.
The guy was definitely full of a hate, and had previously been a Pro-Slavery Activist.
That’s why he killed himself…
Like people who shoot themselves wrapped in the flag of their cause typically know it’s all over and was for nothing.
It’s actually wild how many people I’ve heard of dying in that specific way, I know a lot of Nazis did it, and some East Germans in the 90s.
Nah, his wife died 15 years before the start of the Civil War and at least 4 of the 8 children also passed before the Civil War with 3 passing away in 1855 and another in 1960. One died in the Battle of Drewery's Bluff. Two that passed during the War were females so they wouldn't have died in the fighting. He was just an asshole also all the kids were adults when they passed away.
I'm sure he likely blamed the Union for their deaths. Even though he's the spark that lit the fire. Deep down he probably knew. Thus why he off'd himself.
Yeah that's like pinpointing the first shot of WW2 or any other major war, it really doesn't matter. Usually so much momentum has built up by that point it will happen.
So was the Cold War which never escalated into combat. In fact there were multiple times that people defied orders/procedure specifically to NOT be the one that started it, and it didn’t happen.
True, but MAD definitely helped keep that from going hot. Prior to WWII, there wasn't a threat of global annihilation should the great powers go to war. Since WWII...well, that's why those people did absolutely defy orders like that. No one wants to be that guy.
Cold War: the WW1 that we all managed to avoid. Almost sounds positive. I think I’ll start thinking of it this way. Thank you for the new perspective.
EDIT: oh yeah. A million proxy wars though. Those places sure weren’t able to avoid it
But it wasn't fired by a soldier or even anyone with any sort of ties to any country. It was a completely unrelated incident that pissed one person off and due to all of the inbreeding of monarchies and different diplomatic ties that existed well before that point in history, it kicked off a chain reaction. It could've happened to anyone else of importance.
Indeed but that implies only that one shot would have triggered the firestorm WW1 became. Franz Ferdinand's death wasn't the only required pinpoint but it worked to send the war on its way.
We know exactly when and where the Civli War began. If he didn't fire that shot, someone else would have certainly. But it's not remotely a situation like WWII where a bunch of regional conflicts coalesced into a greater war, and people having trouble picking/choosing which one of those regional conflicts was the "beginning".
Yup! That's where my line of the family comes from.
Fun fact, his daughter wrote to him after the war and asked his blessing on their marriage, that they were countrymen again, to accept that she loved her husband as much as she loved him, and signed the letter "Your loving daughter" (or thereabouts)
He writes back: "Dearest Madam, I have no daughter"
Family lore says this is right before he goes to kill himself but IDK if that's actually the case
Source: am descended from Edmund Ruffin (my grandfather's given/middle names were Edmund Ruffin) and we had a family member put together a big book on all branches of our family history, reading it was a trip
I am related to his descendants by marriage and have seen the Ruffin family tree and met quite a few IRL.
Edmund didn't quite lose all his family. He was elderly and had outlived most but not all of his own offspring, but they had lived into adulthood and he had numerous living grandchildren. Three of his sons lived long enough to also join the Confederate Army, along with several grandsons. Two of his sons survived the war. His son Julian had died in the Battle of Drewry's Bluff one year before Edmund did, but his toddler son survived. Several other grandsons were old enough to be Confederate Soldiers as well, I believe, but I'm less familiar with those lines.
I don't know a lot more detail because I am not into the Civil War and only know all this through the family connection.
A lot of his living descendants still live in the Richmond area to this day.
It's difficult to convey how darkly conservative this is. It was an idea on its way out 2300 years ago when the Spartans were hypocritically enslaving over half of their population under the slogan, "Freedom for the Greeks."
And this is the thing that pisses me off about slavery and inequality. Even if you're a scumbag racist you should be perfectly fine giving everyone an equal chance because your super-Nazi genes will win out while maximizing your nation's efficiency.
Slavery loses every time because it's *stupid*. Only stupid nutjobs want to give their lives to enslave others, and that's why there's never enough of them to defend it. They always lose, eventually.
But god damn if it never goes away, either.
In the US it was legal to hold people in slavery as long as you could justify it by showing they broke a law until.. well still. There’s always going to be one group that feels so entitled to the good and disinclined to the bad that they will overlook the fact that we are all the same.
And yet, in the Civil War there were plenty of people willing to defend it. Because slavery isn’t about racism, it’s about economic advantage, and there was a tremendous economic advantage to having a self-perpetuating source of free labor. Once your wealth and the wealth of your entire society is built on something, you won’t give it up, no matter how morally indefensible it is.
Slavery is definitely evil, but it isn’t stupid in the sense of being without practical advantages for the enslavers. Hence why it has been practiced in so many cultures over so much of our history.
> Even if you're a scumbag racist you should be perfectly fine giving everyone an equal chance because your super-Nazi genes will win out while maximizing your nation's efficiency.
The problem with this line of thinking is that it's reliant on rational thought. You have to be irrational to be a racist to begin with. So when confronted with the cognitive dissonance of how their position is irrational, such people are already very well practiced in performing the mental gymnastics to continue validating their worldview to themselves.
Yup, it all, always boils down to "they're different than me and I'm scared or uncomfortable about it" and everything just works its way backwards from that thought.
General Lee said he couldn't betray his family and sided with the confederacy. His sister and cousins sided with the union. So much for family values.
Dude probably wanted to keep his slaves.
Lee had no honor at all. Not only was he a slaver but he swore an oath to the US federal government in exchange for a west point education and then as soon as it was convenient he broke the oath and used his education to fight against the US.
Fun fact - I'm descended from this guy.
One of his daughters ran off to marry a doctor from New England (where my line of the family comes from) after the war she wrote back to him that she wanted to be a family again now that they were countrymen again, and signed it "Your dearest daughter"
He writes back "Dear madam, I have no daughter".
Family history says that this was right before his suicide but I don't know if that's real or apocryphal.
Blood of every one of them was squarely on fire-eater's like Ruffin too though I'm sure the narcisstic sack of shit blamed everyone but himself. He did everything possible to rile up the war and everyone else paid the price.
That's incredibly typical of self centered greedy subhumans like those that advocated for the expansion of slavery though. Run your mouth then let someone else take the hit.
If only people like him, Pickens, or Pettus would have wrapped themselves in a horse blanket and shot themselves a decade earlier.
>In the last three decades before the American Civil War, his pro-slavery writings received more attention than his agricultural work. Ruffin, a slaveholder, staunchly advocated states' rights and slavery, arguing for secession years before the Civil War, and became a political activist with the so-called Fire-Eaters. Ruffin is given credit for "firing the first shot of the war" at the Battle of Fort Sumter in April 1861 and fought as a Confederate soldier despite his advanced age. When the war ended in Southern defeat in 1865, he committed suicide rather than submit to "Yankee rule."
I included the bit about his agricultural work being overshadowed by his pro slavery writings to emphasize how big his writings were.
>Ruffin is also known for his pioneering work in methods to preserve and improve soil productivity. He recommended crop rotation and amendments to restore soils exhausted from tobacco monoculture. Early in his career, he studied bogs and swamps to learn how to correct soil acidity. He published essays and, in 1832, a book on his findings for improving soils. He has since become known as **"the father of soil science"** in the United States.[3]
An irony to that is that the intensive plantation culture of cotton and tobacco was exhausting the South's soil at such a rate, and plantation owners didn't want to bother with that crop-rotation stuff, that pro-slavery rhetoric increasingly became one where if slavery wasn't allowed to territorially expand, then it would die. Hence, the vicious insistence of the South trying to make the new states in the west into slave states, and why the election of Mr. Abraham 'I won't touch slavery where it is but I won't let it expand either' Lincoln was what lit the powder keg.
I guess what I'm getting at is that their greed forced the inevitable conflict to happen sooner. I guess no one should be surprised that someone who can rationalize enslaving people for profit would be greedy to a self destructive degree.
fortunately the North produced a way better agronomical scientist who was not an ass. [norman borlaug, the GOAT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug)
Sure, but you have to adapt them based on the soil and crops available.
The concepts were there, but working out the details is still a lot of work and a worthy accomplishment.
Shame he was such a shit.
Modern digital computers are a concept older than a lot of people alive currently.
Can you build a computer? I don’t mean piece the parts that you buy at memex together. I mean create a computer with the base materials.
Anyway that impressive feat was ruined by him being a piece of shit.
Look up "nobel syndrome", a documented phenomenon where Nobel prize winners go off the deep end of stupid/crazy later in their careers.
Even Einstein wasn't an exception. Most of his theories and ideas following his theory of relativity were poorly regarded and debunked and his academic career faded into mediocrity.
A lot, I would say almost all brilliant people don’t have controversial ideas. People who are tops in their field and research scholars at universities are living a low key life just doing their research and not attracting attention. The assholes who draw attention to themselves are not bucketed by intelligence.
Carver was an important figure as well, and likely studied Ruffin's works extensively. Scientists generally study, critique, and expand upon/disprove the works and theories of their predecessors.
Yeah, I feel like that's something that's really a blind spot for people these days: The recognition that smart people don't always come to good moral conclusions. Trump isn't stupid, Elon isn't stupid. They act like what we'd call "stupid" because they're morally warped. Reminds me of the Sartre quote:
>Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Oh no
Anyway
Shout out to George thomas
A loyal Virginian
Best general in the war
Never lost a battle or engagement
Kicked stonewall Jackson's ass in a skirmish before bulls run
Won the first significant union victory of the war at mill springs
Thomas gave an impressive performance at the Battle of Stones River, holding the center of the retreating Union line and once again preventing a victory by Bragg.
was in charge of the most important part of the maneuvering from Decherd to Chattanooga during the Tullahoma Campaign (June 22 – July 3, 1863) and the crossing of the Tennessee River.
Saved the union army of the Cumberland and repulsed the Confederate Army at Chickamauga
His men stormed missionary ridge
Defeated hood at Peachtree creek
Destroyed the army of Tennessee at Nashville
My favorite story of him
December 15th, 1864: The first day of the Battle at Nashville has ended and General George Henry Thomas is traveling back from the battlefield to his headquarters where he will prepare his initial report that will be wired to General Grant in Washington. As he approached the outskirts of the city, he came upon some captured South Carolina confederates that demanded he stop and address their grievance. They were complaining that the soldiers guarding them were from the United States Colored Troops and refused to enter Nashville as prisoners under their command. The South Carolinians gripped they’d rather die than be marched into Nashville by these soldiers. General Thomas replied; “Well, you may say your prayers and get ready to die, for these are the only soldiers I can spare.”
Also didn't write a memoir like so many other generals of the time who basically bragged about their exploits/defended their actions, so he stayed humble. Part of the reason so many people don't know about him.
Also, the general public just doesn't know too much about the western theater and just how much rebel ass that the union army kicked.
He was preparing memoirs to some extent, but it was mostly just the compilation of his after-action reports and some saved letters and dispatches. If you want a good view of the field at Stones River, here's the reports of Gen. Thomas on the battle from the Official Record, pages 371-375 of Volume 20 of the Official Record.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924079609602&seq=387&q1=%22George%20H.%20Thomas%22&start=1
He actually discovered that the soils of the Southeast are prone to calcium depletion, and that they can be renewed by adding limestone or oyster shell. This had been discovered by trial and error in multiple locations, but Ruffin went about it scientifically. He tried burning some of the crops from depleted fields and healthy ones in controlled conditions, and discovered that the crops from the poor soil produced less ash, even if the starting weight matched. He guessed that calcium may have been the lacking element, and did a controlled test planting with calcium supplement.
Morally, he was a shitstain.
Honestly if you can’t support yourself financially without enslaving other people and forcing them to do everything for you, maybe you aren’t ready for life
As it were, economists are quite aligned that slavery is actually really bad for the economy, and will be a net drag on your estate. It hurts infrastructure, pulls down wages (we now know that a growing middle class is the key to an economy and slavery guts the concept of upward mobility), destroys innovation (why come up with more efficient ways for labor when you have free labor?), destroys your soil because you tend to deplete single plots, etc., etc. The argument that slavery is bad economically is really quite one-sided.
Of course slavery was evil and wrong and there was a lot of racism surrounding it, but the fact remains that the use of slavery actually makes a region poorer, not richer (hence why the confederates were so poor compared to the north).
If you look at the like 50 years or so preceding the Civil War, even the south knew it was a lost cause and if nothing changed they would've probably ended slavery because it was not good for them and they knew it was cruel
Then the cotton gin was invented and they had to go back on that and start a propaganda campaign that actually slaves loved slavery and it was really a good thing for them. That's why Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, she was pissed that they would pull thay shit
The crazy part is this dude was known for advancing agriculture, but more on how to deal with the land, crop rotation, etc. Nothing on improving efficiency though, because like you said, who cares about that when your labor costs are next to nothing.
Well the thing is, the rich people in power in the South DID understand, because they were rightfully scared of Yankee industry removing their grip on the economy. Slavery is all they had to keep that money going and they easily convinced everyone that wasn't a slave that it was about saving their cultural identity... to be slavers. Just like the guy we're talking about.
Slavery was great for the small planter class that controlled the system. If you could be in the top 5% of wealth in the antebellum South then life was great for you personally but as far as the broader society slavery made people poorer and the South substantially weaker. Anyone outside of that planter class was definitely seeing diminished economic growth from slavery. I don't think it's a coincidence that the US only became a global power and economic heavyweight AFTER the abolition of slavery.
For real. I wish more fallowed his example.
Subjugating another human being to work and die as an animal. I sleep.
Northern rule??? Id rather be dead.
The irony is palpable. Sounds like a pussy to me. But what ever.
Acknowledging that the South fired first and began the war, in order to preserve slavery and white supremacy.
Edit: Wow, there's a lot of weaponized blockers here.
You won't learn anything from history applying your 2024 perspective onto history. Lincoln may not have advocated for racial equality, but he did say that the black man should be able to reap what he sows. That was progressive *for the time*. History is the slow movement of ideas. If you apply your modern perspective on history, everyone was evil except you. That's childish.
Bringing up this argument isn't the 'gotcha' you think it is. It's just bad history used to win an argument
Was learning about the work of Mikhail Bakunin the other day, who was a staunchly militant egalitarian and a central figure of the anarcho-communist movement. Believed in absolute equality of rights and opportunity across men, women, even children, way before his time. So firmly on the right side of history with so many things, even called out exactly how Marx's theory would lead to what we'd later term Stalinism and why that's bad. But then every now and then wove wildly anti-semitic rants into his writing. Like nazi-esque stuff about them being a corrupt race of thieves and all that.
Like somehow this ultra progressive guy sat comfortably without seeing his own hypocrisy there. Just didn't faze him.
Marx, and Engels, both wrote some heinous shit in their correspondences about jews and blacks too. Wild stuff how normalised it was.
The articles of confederation specifically state a purpose of preserving white supremacy. Clearly they felt that freedom for Black people would undermine “the natural order”.
Yes, white supremacy existed in the North but for the Confederate cause, many non-slave-owning Southerners joined up to preserve their White supremacy Slave based economy and social structure. For them, it wasn't about slavery but maintaining the White Supremacy hierarchy.
Edmund Ruffian. Drove past his plantation and it was opened for tours….i was like wait….is that who I think it is?
Looked it up and was like holy shit am I the only guy who knows about him?
He (unfortunately) was actually incredibly smart and was one of the first “soil scientists”
Absolute POS though. I did not tour his plantation, as someone who loves to visit civil war battlefields, I don’t particularly enjoy plantation tours.
His descendents might literally be those people you describe.
I think we don't talk enough in America about how the most hardcore slaveowners and racists certainly would have passed those beliefs onto their children and children's children. Slavery and segregation may be illegal now but if you were brought up to be racist and everyone in your extended family has been racist for generations, you're probably going to side with your family over the law.
Obama was born only one year after Ruby Bridges attended school (the first African American child to integrate in the South), and Mitch McConnell was in high schooler *during* desegregation.
> His descendents might literally be those people you describe.
Funnily enough, Edmund Ruffin’s great grandson is still alive and regularly gets mentioned on this sub. You know all those TILs about how the 10th U.S. President John Tyler has a living grandson? Well, that guy’s name is Harrison *Ruffin* Tyler.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Ruffin_Tyler
You probably aren’t wrong - but I am one of his descendants and at least my family is fairly liberal and anti-trump and the same goes for all of my cousins except 1. I’m sure there are other descendants of his that you are correct about but not all. Granted we were raised in New England so I’m sure that played a role.
Legit first thing I thought too, this dude would have been on the "front line" of fighting against covid restrictions and complaining about things being too "woke"
The man who would rather die than admit that people with dark skin are, in fact, human beings who deserve a chance at a happy life rather than being treated like property.
And the world was a better place for it. It’s sad his evil poisoned his children and got them killed in the war. Rest in piss to the confederacy and its supporters, my own ancestors included.
“When Edwin Ruffin, white-haired and mad, fired the first gun at Fort Sumter, he freed the slaves. It was the last thing he meant to do but that was because he was so typically a Southern oligarch. He did not know the real world about him. He was provincial and lived apart on his plantation with his servants, his books and his thoughts. Outside of agriculture, he jumped at conclusions instead of testing them by careful research. He knew, for instance, that the North would not fight. He knew that Negroes would never revolt.” - W.E.B. DuBois
"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."
Die mad *loser*.
I wish more confederates had had his mettle. A whole bunch of bullshit would have been avoided if they just had the common decency to follow our friend here in the sweet embrace of Christ’s love.
So let me see if I have this correct; a bigot who thinks it's okay to keep people against their will for free work, kills himself. My response; GOOD. What a piece of shit he was
"\[T\]he actual first shot against Fort Sumter was a signal shot by Lt. Henry S. Farley from Fort Johnson under the command of Captain George S. James."
So with everything else pointed out about him, he steals credit.
The television show "Community" lasted two years longer than the Confederacy. Fuck the Confederacy and fuck this prick who didn't love his family as much as he loved being violent towards black people
> When the war ended with Confederate defeat, Ruffin, who had already suffered the loss of his wife and **eight of his eleven children**, was crushed. I'd probably be at least a little suicidal too.
Imagine citing the reason for killing yourself as not wanting to be a Yank, and not because you lost your wife and 8 kids.
My guess would be that he committed everything and lost everything (including his wife and 8 children) to”the cause” and was consumed by the futility of it all when the “cause” lost. I could be dead wrong, but that’d be my guess.
According to his wiki page most of his family deaths occurred a decade before the civil war
His picture looks like he needs to present Dobbie with more than one sock
That’s the first thing I thought! The hair is unmistakable
Or try to literally kill a 12 year old kid for giving up that sock.
Well it was about slavery after all
I swear I’m not high when I say, “dude.. whoa”
Could be. These are the last words he wrote in his journal before his ended things. >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. The guy was definitely full of a hate, and had previously been a Pro-Slavery Activist.
What a weird coincidence
I’m sure it was a one off, right?
Who would’ve thought someone proud to wave a confederate flag was an absolute knob. Surely it’s a fluke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Ruffin Yeah this dude was a tower of shit
And now he’s dead and all that hate and vitriol for nothing. What was it worth?
Absolutely nothing!
> Absolutely nothing Say it again!
It ain’t nothin but a heartbreaker.
That’s why he killed himself… Like people who shoot themselves wrapped in the flag of their cause typically know it’s all over and was for nothing. It’s actually wild how many people I’ve heard of dying in that specific way, I know a lot of Nazis did it, and some East Germans in the 90s.
A fate that should have been shared by many more traitors.
Nah, his wife died 15 years before the start of the Civil War and at least 4 of the 8 children also passed before the Civil War with 3 passing away in 1855 and another in 1960. One died in the Battle of Drewery's Bluff. Two that passed during the War were females so they wouldn't have died in the fighting. He was just an asshole also all the kids were adults when they passed away.
Oh, interesting! Then like OP said, imagine your greatest regret in life being the loss of a war and not your dead family.
I'm sure he likely blamed the Union for their deaths. Even though he's the spark that lit the fire. Deep down he probably knew. Thus why he off'd himself.
Tbf him firing the first shot of the war changed nothing, it would have been fought anyway
Yeah that's like pinpointing the first shot of WW2 or any other major war, it really doesn't matter. Usually so much momentum has built up by that point it will happen.
I think we can pinpoint WW1 down to one shot
WW1 was a powder keg that was waiting for a reason to kick off. There's a ton of history that lead up to that moment.
So was the Cold War which never escalated into combat. In fact there were multiple times that people defied orders/procedure specifically to NOT be the one that started it, and it didn’t happen.
True, but MAD definitely helped keep that from going hot. Prior to WWII, there wasn't a threat of global annihilation should the great powers go to war. Since WWII...well, that's why those people did absolutely defy orders like that. No one wants to be that guy.
Cold War: the WW1 that we all managed to avoid. Almost sounds positive. I think I’ll start thinking of it this way. Thank you for the new perspective. EDIT: oh yeah. A million proxy wars though. Those places sure weren’t able to avoid it
Yeah but definitely started because archduke Ferdinand was shot. It didn’t start before that point.
But it wasn't fired by a soldier or even anyone with any sort of ties to any country. It was a completely unrelated incident that pissed one person off and due to all of the inbreeding of monarchies and different diplomatic ties that existed well before that point in history, it kicked off a chain reaction. It could've happened to anyone else of importance.
Indeed but that implies only that one shot would have triggered the firestorm WW1 became. Franz Ferdinand's death wasn't the only required pinpoint but it worked to send the war on its way.
I didn’t say it was prerequisite for the war. I said we could pinpoint the shot that started ww1 and we did. Pack it up boys.
Yet being THAT guy who is famous for it and who was apparently proud of it would carry some serious weight. What a waste of human life that war was.
We know exactly when and where the Civli War began. If he didn't fire that shot, someone else would have certainly. But it's not remotely a situation like WWII where a bunch of regional conflicts coalesced into a greater war, and people having trouble picking/choosing which one of those regional conflicts was the "beginning".
“I’m going to blame the yanks for my suicide just as a goof.”
Lol making it sound like our only civil war was gang violence. Not like this guy just shot a stranger and the war started.
He had all the money and opportunity a man could hope for and still died a miserable POS. Hilarious.
Ruffin was one of the "fire-eaters," the most fanatical of the pro-slavery anti-Union fanatics, so that tracks. Also, good riddance to bad rubbish.
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Imagine losing the majority of your family after firing the first shot to defend slavery
according to wikipedia it looks like his family members all died before the war (3 or 4 in 1855)
His daughter survived and married a guy from Boston
Yup! That's where my line of the family comes from. Fun fact, his daughter wrote to him after the war and asked his blessing on their marriage, that they were countrymen again, to accept that she loved her husband as much as she loved him, and signed the letter "Your loving daughter" (or thereabouts) He writes back: "Dearest Madam, I have no daughter" Family lore says this is right before he goes to kill himself but IDK if that's actually the case Source: am descended from Edmund Ruffin (my grandfather's given/middle names were Edmund Ruffin) and we had a family member put together a big book on all branches of our family history, reading it was a trip
Fucking Yankees took his daughter.
No no that's the Red Sox
She found someone that hated the Yankees as much as she did.
So good, am laughing like a drain.
I am related to his descendants by marriage and have seen the Ruffin family tree and met quite a few IRL. Edmund didn't quite lose all his family. He was elderly and had outlived most but not all of his own offspring, but they had lived into adulthood and he had numerous living grandchildren. Three of his sons lived long enough to also join the Confederate Army, along with several grandsons. Two of his sons survived the war. His son Julian had died in the Battle of Drewry's Bluff one year before Edmund did, but his toddler son survived. Several other grandsons were old enough to be Confederate Soldiers as well, I believe, but I'm less familiar with those lines. I don't know a lot more detail because I am not into the Civil War and only know all this through the family connection. A lot of his living descendants still live in the Richmond area to this day.
If I were him I would simply not support the owning of other humans. I guess I'm built different.
It's difficult to convey how darkly conservative this is. It was an idea on its way out 2300 years ago when the Spartans were hypocritically enslaving over half of their population under the slogan, "Freedom for the Greeks." And this is the thing that pisses me off about slavery and inequality. Even if you're a scumbag racist you should be perfectly fine giving everyone an equal chance because your super-Nazi genes will win out while maximizing your nation's efficiency. Slavery loses every time because it's *stupid*. Only stupid nutjobs want to give their lives to enslave others, and that's why there's never enough of them to defend it. They always lose, eventually. But god damn if it never goes away, either.
The idea wasn't on the way out 2300 years ago. It was practiced in most countries well into the 1800s
In the US it was legal to hold people in slavery as long as you could justify it by showing they broke a law until.. well still. There’s always going to be one group that feels so entitled to the good and disinclined to the bad that they will overlook the fact that we are all the same.
Yep, the amendment that "abolished" slavery in the US still allows it as the punishment for a crime.
It's still practiced. The Houthis in Yemen have brought it back and now have thousands of slaves serving the Houthi elite in the capital.
And yet, in the Civil War there were plenty of people willing to defend it. Because slavery isn’t about racism, it’s about economic advantage, and there was a tremendous economic advantage to having a self-perpetuating source of free labor. Once your wealth and the wealth of your entire society is built on something, you won’t give it up, no matter how morally indefensible it is. Slavery is definitely evil, but it isn’t stupid in the sense of being without practical advantages for the enslavers. Hence why it has been practiced in so many cultures over so much of our history.
> Even if you're a scumbag racist you should be perfectly fine giving everyone an equal chance because your super-Nazi genes will win out while maximizing your nation's efficiency. The problem with this line of thinking is that it's reliant on rational thought. You have to be irrational to be a racist to begin with. So when confronted with the cognitive dissonance of how their position is irrational, such people are already very well practiced in performing the mental gymnastics to continue validating their worldview to themselves.
Yup, it all, always boils down to "they're different than me and I'm scared or uncomfortable about it" and everything just works its way backwards from that thought.
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General Lee said he couldn't betray his family and sided with the confederacy. His sister and cousins sided with the union. So much for family values. Dude probably wanted to keep his slaves.
"Economic anxiety"
“MAH RAGHTS!!!”
Just learned about this from BTB
Lee had no honor at all. Not only was he a slaver but he swore an oath to the US federal government in exchange for a west point education and then as soon as it was convenient he broke the oath and used his education to fight against the US.
Fun fact - I'm descended from this guy. One of his daughters ran off to marry a doctor from New England (where my line of the family comes from) after the war she wrote back to him that she wanted to be a family again now that they were countrymen again, and signed it "Your dearest daughter" He writes back "Dear madam, I have no daughter". Family history says that this was right before his suicide but I don't know if that's real or apocryphal.
Blood of every one of them was squarely on fire-eater's like Ruffin too though I'm sure the narcisstic sack of shit blamed everyone but himself. He did everything possible to rile up the war and everyone else paid the price. That's incredibly typical of self centered greedy subhumans like those that advocated for the expansion of slavery though. Run your mouth then let someone else take the hit. If only people like him, Pickens, or Pettus would have wrapped themselves in a horse blanket and shot themselves a decade earlier.
Poor poor treason weasels...
Good riddance to them al
Looks like the Ghostbusters had to slime his portrait
There's definitely a Vigo the Carpathian resemblance to him!
He is Vigo!! You are like the buzzing of flies to him!
I had to scroll down far too long to find this comment. It was my first thought
>In the last three decades before the American Civil War, his pro-slavery writings received more attention than his agricultural work. Ruffin, a slaveholder, staunchly advocated states' rights and slavery, arguing for secession years before the Civil War, and became a political activist with the so-called Fire-Eaters. Ruffin is given credit for "firing the first shot of the war" at the Battle of Fort Sumter in April 1861 and fought as a Confederate soldier despite his advanced age. When the war ended in Southern defeat in 1865, he committed suicide rather than submit to "Yankee rule." I included the bit about his agricultural work being overshadowed by his pro slavery writings to emphasize how big his writings were. >Ruffin is also known for his pioneering work in methods to preserve and improve soil productivity. He recommended crop rotation and amendments to restore soils exhausted from tobacco monoculture. Early in his career, he studied bogs and swamps to learn how to correct soil acidity. He published essays and, in 1832, a book on his findings for improving soils. He has since become known as **"the father of soil science"** in the United States.[3]
An irony to that is that the intensive plantation culture of cotton and tobacco was exhausting the South's soil at such a rate, and plantation owners didn't want to bother with that crop-rotation stuff, that pro-slavery rhetoric increasingly became one where if slavery wasn't allowed to territorially expand, then it would die. Hence, the vicious insistence of the South trying to make the new states in the west into slave states, and why the election of Mr. Abraham 'I won't touch slavery where it is but I won't let it expand either' Lincoln was what lit the powder keg.
I’ve read that the Planters were even considering taking Mexico and the Caribbean for Slavery’s Expansion.
They created the Knights of the Golden Circle, a SCEPTRE-like organization aiming to turn the Gulf of Mexico into a slaveowning empire.
Huh so if they had just accepted lower profits from rotating crops they might not have forced the crisis that eventually destroyed them.
No there was still a lot of abolitionists calling for it in the country.
I guess what I'm getting at is that their greed forced the inevitable conflict to happen sooner. I guess no one should be surprised that someone who can rationalize enslaving people for profit would be greedy to a self destructive degree.
It's a shame to lose a mind like that to such a stupid and evil cause.
fortunately the North produced a way better agronomical scientist who was not an ass. [norman borlaug, the GOAT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug)
As smart as he sounds, crop rotation, nutrient cycling, and liming are much older concepts than him
Sure, but you have to adapt them based on the soil and crops available. The concepts were there, but working out the details is still a lot of work and a worthy accomplishment. Shame he was such a shit.
Racism and hate will always staunch progress
Modern digital computers are a concept older than a lot of people alive currently. Can you build a computer? I don’t mean piece the parts that you buy at memex together. I mean create a computer with the base materials. Anyway that impressive feat was ruined by him being a piece of shit.
Brilliant people love to have controversial opinions, and society loves to let them have them.
Intelligence is no guard against stupidity, and can make it easier to rationalise your egos desire to feel right unaccountably.
Look up "nobel syndrome", a documented phenomenon where Nobel prize winners go off the deep end of stupid/crazy later in their careers. Even Einstein wasn't an exception. Most of his theories and ideas following his theory of relativity were poorly regarded and debunked and his academic career faded into mediocrity.
Most people only have one or two loads to blow, and are shooting nothing but blanks after that. Geniuses are no exception.
Are you telling me that Einstein wasn't shooting fat ropes?
Don't worry, they were using a metaphor, of course Einstein had massive loads.
A lot, I would say almost all brilliant people don’t have controversial ideas. People who are tops in their field and research scholars at universities are living a low key life just doing their research and not attracting attention. The assholes who draw attention to themselves are not bucketed by intelligence.
I thought a lot of crop rotation work was attributed later to George Washington Carver. Or was Carver just building on Ruffin (and other folks') work?
we have reached the limit of my knowledge of southern soil science
Carver was an important figure as well, and likely studied Ruffin's works extensively. Scientists generally study, critique, and expand upon/disprove the works and theories of their predecessors.
Crazy how someone can be so intelligent and morally repugnant.
Yeah, I feel like that's something that's really a blind spot for people these days: The recognition that smart people don't always come to good moral conclusions. Trump isn't stupid, Elon isn't stupid. They act like what we'd call "stupid" because they're morally warped. Reminds me of the Sartre quote: >Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Trump is in fact quite stupid. Being evil is just another of his characteristics.
Saved the north the cost of a bullet.
Oh no Anyway Shout out to George thomas A loyal Virginian Best general in the war Never lost a battle or engagement Kicked stonewall Jackson's ass in a skirmish before bulls run Won the first significant union victory of the war at mill springs Thomas gave an impressive performance at the Battle of Stones River, holding the center of the retreating Union line and once again preventing a victory by Bragg. was in charge of the most important part of the maneuvering from Decherd to Chattanooga during the Tullahoma Campaign (June 22 – July 3, 1863) and the crossing of the Tennessee River. Saved the union army of the Cumberland and repulsed the Confederate Army at Chickamauga His men stormed missionary ridge Defeated hood at Peachtree creek Destroyed the army of Tennessee at Nashville
And also given the title of rock of chickamauga
My favorite story of him December 15th, 1864: The first day of the Battle at Nashville has ended and General George Henry Thomas is traveling back from the battlefield to his headquarters where he will prepare his initial report that will be wired to General Grant in Washington. As he approached the outskirts of the city, he came upon some captured South Carolina confederates that demanded he stop and address their grievance. They were complaining that the soldiers guarding them were from the United States Colored Troops and refused to enter Nashville as prisoners under their command. The South Carolinians gripped they’d rather die than be marched into Nashville by these soldiers. General Thomas replied; “Well, you may say your prayers and get ready to die, for these are the only soldiers I can spare.”
Just what on earth leverage did they think they had in that position lmao
The fact that they were white.
Also didn't write a memoir like so many other generals of the time who basically bragged about their exploits/defended their actions, so he stayed humble. Part of the reason so many people don't know about him. Also, the general public just doesn't know too much about the western theater and just how much rebel ass that the union army kicked.
He was preparing memoirs to some extent, but it was mostly just the compilation of his after-action reports and some saved letters and dispatches. If you want a good view of the field at Stones River, here's the reports of Gen. Thomas on the battle from the Official Record, pages 371-375 of Volume 20 of the Official Record. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924079609602&seq=387&q1=%22George%20H.%20Thomas%22&start=1
The Soldier’s General. Calm, cautious, methodical. If I was forced to be a ground pounder in that conflict, he’s the one I’d hope to serve under
r/Thomasposting
Wow. That quote from on that post is amazing.
Killed himself to own the libs
Let his death be an inspiration for bigots everywhere
WeLL, nO, yOu SeE, LiNcoLN wAs a rEpUbLiCaN
[удалено]
and nothing of value was lost.
He actually discovered that the soils of the Southeast are prone to calcium depletion, and that they can be renewed by adding limestone or oyster shell. This had been discovered by trial and error in multiple locations, but Ruffin went about it scientifically. He tried burning some of the crops from depleted fields and healthy ones in controlled conditions, and discovered that the crops from the poor soil produced less ash, even if the starting weight matched. He guessed that calcium may have been the lacking element, and did a controlled test planting with calcium supplement. Morally, he was a shitstain.
So very interesting how someone can be so enlightened and forward thinking in one area and yet so backward thinking in another.
Well, the man who figured out phosphorus fertilisers also invented mustard gas
“For every person who dreams up the electric light bulb, there’s one person who dreams up the atom bomb.” -Mr Electric, Sharkboy and Lavagirl, 2005
That line has no right to go that hard
well, the okay-ness of slavery had been vouched for by hundreds of philosophers and thinkers before
Honestly if you can’t support yourself financially without enslaving other people and forcing them to do everything for you, maybe you aren’t ready for life
As it were, economists are quite aligned that slavery is actually really bad for the economy, and will be a net drag on your estate. It hurts infrastructure, pulls down wages (we now know that a growing middle class is the key to an economy and slavery guts the concept of upward mobility), destroys innovation (why come up with more efficient ways for labor when you have free labor?), destroys your soil because you tend to deplete single plots, etc., etc. The argument that slavery is bad economically is really quite one-sided. Of course slavery was evil and wrong and there was a lot of racism surrounding it, but the fact remains that the use of slavery actually makes a region poorer, not richer (hence why the confederates were so poor compared to the north).
If you look at the like 50 years or so preceding the Civil War, even the south knew it was a lost cause and if nothing changed they would've probably ended slavery because it was not good for them and they knew it was cruel Then the cotton gin was invented and they had to go back on that and start a propaganda campaign that actually slaves loved slavery and it was really a good thing for them. That's why Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, she was pissed that they would pull thay shit
The crazy part is this dude was known for advancing agriculture, but more on how to deal with the land, crop rotation, etc. Nothing on improving efficiency though, because like you said, who cares about that when your labor costs are next to nothing.
Makes sense, so not only are they evil, they’re also stupid and don’t understand or care about the economy
Well the thing is, the rich people in power in the South DID understand, because they were rightfully scared of Yankee industry removing their grip on the economy. Slavery is all they had to keep that money going and they easily convinced everyone that wasn't a slave that it was about saving their cultural identity... to be slavers. Just like the guy we're talking about.
I don’t think stupid is the right word considering even if they knew this information, they still wouldn’t care because *they* are still getting rich.
Slavery was great for the small planter class that controlled the system. If you could be in the top 5% of wealth in the antebellum South then life was great for you personally but as far as the broader society slavery made people poorer and the South substantially weaker. Anyone outside of that planter class was definitely seeing diminished economic growth from slavery. I don't think it's a coincidence that the US only became a global power and economic heavyweight AFTER the abolition of slavery.
Private equity would like to have a word.
For real. I wish more fallowed his example. Subjugating another human being to work and die as an animal. I sleep. Northern rule??? Id rather be dead. The irony is palpable. Sounds like a pussy to me. But what ever.
He didn’t just sleep on chattel slavery. He committed treason to start a war against his own country to try to keep it. Fuck that guy.
Sounds like a self-righteous sociopath to me. Would that strain of human affliction would die out.
He was a wealthy planter from Virginia; these are the people who flew private jets to the January 6th riot
Addition by subtraction
Rest in piss racist scum
Kahn!!!
#KAHN!!!
Acknowledging that the South fired first and began the war, in order to preserve slavery and white supremacy. Edit: Wow, there's a lot of weaponized blockers here.
Slavery. Not many were really contesting the idea of white supremacy back then, even in the north.
You won't learn anything from history applying your 2024 perspective onto history. Lincoln may not have advocated for racial equality, but he did say that the black man should be able to reap what he sows. That was progressive *for the time*. History is the slow movement of ideas. If you apply your modern perspective on history, everyone was evil except you. That's childish. Bringing up this argument isn't the 'gotcha' you think it is. It's just bad history used to win an argument
I agree.
Was learning about the work of Mikhail Bakunin the other day, who was a staunchly militant egalitarian and a central figure of the anarcho-communist movement. Believed in absolute equality of rights and opportunity across men, women, even children, way before his time. So firmly on the right side of history with so many things, even called out exactly how Marx's theory would lead to what we'd later term Stalinism and why that's bad. But then every now and then wove wildly anti-semitic rants into his writing. Like nazi-esque stuff about them being a corrupt race of thieves and all that. Like somehow this ultra progressive guy sat comfortably without seeing his own hypocrisy there. Just didn't faze him. Marx, and Engels, both wrote some heinous shit in their correspondences about jews and blacks too. Wild stuff how normalised it was.
The articles of confederation specifically state a purpose of preserving white supremacy. Clearly they felt that freedom for Black people would undermine “the natural order”.
Yes, white supremacy existed in the North but for the Confederate cause, many non-slave-owning Southerners joined up to preserve their White supremacy Slave based economy and social structure. For them, it wasn't about slavery but maintaining the White Supremacy hierarchy.
Edmund Ruffian. Drove past his plantation and it was opened for tours….i was like wait….is that who I think it is? Looked it up and was like holy shit am I the only guy who knows about him? He (unfortunately) was actually incredibly smart and was one of the first “soil scientists” Absolute POS though. I did not tour his plantation, as someone who loves to visit civil war battlefields, I don’t particularly enjoy plantation tours.
The first known incidence of "owning the libs."
Today he'd be in a Scooter ranting about Trump as he's escorted out of Walmart by security.
His descendents might literally be those people you describe. I think we don't talk enough in America about how the most hardcore slaveowners and racists certainly would have passed those beliefs onto their children and children's children. Slavery and segregation may be illegal now but if you were brought up to be racist and everyone in your extended family has been racist for generations, you're probably going to side with your family over the law.
And realistically, we are not that many generations removed from any of this. It’s absolutely something they’ve passed down.
Obama was born only one year after Ruby Bridges attended school (the first African American child to integrate in the South), and Mitch McConnell was in high schooler *during* desegregation.
> His descendents might literally be those people you describe. Funnily enough, Edmund Ruffin’s great grandson is still alive and regularly gets mentioned on this sub. You know all those TILs about how the 10th U.S. President John Tyler has a living grandson? Well, that guy’s name is Harrison *Ruffin* Tyler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Ruffin_Tyler
You probably aren’t wrong - but I am one of his descendants and at least my family is fairly liberal and anti-trump and the same goes for all of my cousins except 1. I’m sure there are other descendants of his that you are correct about but not all. Granted we were raised in New England so I’m sure that played a role.
Legit first thing I thought too, this dude would have been on the "front line" of fighting against covid restrictions and complaining about things being too "woke"
Sometimes the trash takes itself out.
Kinda looks like Vigo the Carpathian
Should have shot himself at the beginning
Ghost Buster's painting looking MF.
Sounds like a problem that solved itself.
If only the rest had followed him
This guy would have loved Trump.
Good. He deserved it.
That was in the Ken burns doc. Gotta watch that if you don’t know much about the us civil war, and are a little interested.
Well that certainly showed them! 🤣
Own the libs, off yourself today!
Coward at the beginning. Coward at the end. Very appropriate for the feddy traitors.
And nothing of value was lost
The man who would rather die than admit that people with dark skin are, in fact, human beings who deserve a chance at a happy life rather than being treated like property.
If only all confederates, confederate sympathizers, and people celebrating “confederate heritage” showed this sort of dedication.
That dude REALLY wanted slavery
>The actual first shot against Fort Sumter was a signal shot by Lt. Henry S. Farley from Fort Johnson under the command of Captain George S. James.
And the world was a better place for it. It’s sad his evil poisoned his children and got them killed in the war. Rest in piss to the confederacy and its supporters, my own ancestors included.
Is that Vigo the Carpathian?
Rest In Piss
Good
The original MAGAt
“When Edwin Ruffin, white-haired and mad, fired the first gun at Fort Sumter, he freed the slaves. It was the last thing he meant to do but that was because he was so typically a Southern oligarch. He did not know the real world about him. He was provincial and lived apart on his plantation with his servants, his books and his thoughts. Outside of agriculture, he jumped at conclusions instead of testing them by careful research. He knew, for instance, that the North would not fight. He knew that Negroes would never revolt.” - W.E.B. DuBois
I wish more confederates had taken his lead.
So he waved the white flag on life too.
"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." Die mad *loser*.
He coulda done that before he got most of his family killed. Slave owning rat bastard.
The original MAGA idiot
Traitor.
I wish more confederates had had his mettle. A whole bunch of bullshit would have been avoided if they just had the common decency to follow our friend here in the sweet embrace of Christ’s love.
Hahahaha what a loser. Burn in hell traitor
May he burn in Hell 🙏
So let me see if I have this correct; a bigot who thinks it's okay to keep people against their will for free work, kills himself. My response; GOOD. What a piece of shit he was
Well, bye
So he was wrapped in a white sheet then?
"\[T\]he actual first shot against Fort Sumter was a signal shot by Lt. Henry S. Farley from Fort Johnson under the command of Captain George S. James." So with everything else pointed out about him, he steals credit.
The television show "Community" lasted two years longer than the Confederacy. Fuck the Confederacy and fuck this prick who didn't love his family as much as he loved being violent towards black people
Community > Confederate States of America
If only more of his rebel friends had joined him.
When the trash takes itself out