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Edmund Ruffin (January 5, 1794 – June 18, 1865) was a wealthy Virginia planter and slaveholder who in the 1850s was a political activist known as one of the Fire-Eaters. He advocated states' rights and justified slavery, arguing for secession years before the Civil War. Ruffin was credited as "firing the first shot of the war" at the Battle of Fort Sumter; he served 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."〔 Ruffin's chief legacy is his pioneering work in methods to preserve and improve soil productivity; he recommended crop rotation and additions 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 1852 a book on his findings for improving soils. He has become known as "the father of soil science" in the United States.〔(Ruffin, Edmund. ''Nature's Management: Writings on Landscape and Reform, 1822-1859'' ), edited by Jack Temple Kirby, University of Georgia Press, 2006〕 He was among a circle of intellectuals who sought reformation in the South.〔 He also wrote books on slavery and the economy of the South, and a comparison between conditions of slavery and those of free labor in the North. In the last three decades before the Civil War, such pro-slavery writings received more attention than his agricultural work. Ruffin wrote in his diary in January 1859, "I have had more notice taken on my late pamphlet (slavery ) than on anything I ever wrote before."〔(Drew Gilpin Faust, ''The Ideology of Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Antebellum South, 1830--1860'' ) (Google Ebook), LSU Press, 1981〕 In 1989, at a time of increased scholarly attention to southern intellectuals, his diary was edited and published posthumously by Louisiana State University Press. The Edmund Ruffin Plantation, also known as Marlbourne, has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. == Antebellum life == Ruffin was born at Evergreen Plantation in Prince George County, Virginia. A descendant of William Randolph and his wife Mary, he was born into Virginia's planter class aristocracy and inherited large tracts of land along the James River. In his 20s Ruffin began experimenting with using marl to rejuvenate the soil on his land along the James River that was worn out after more than a century of tobacco monoculture. In 1843, he purchased another plantation, Marlbourne, in Hanover County near Richmond, in the Virginia Tidewater. The land had long been cultivated for tobacco, and finding the soil exhausted, he became a serious agronomist who helped revolutionize southern agriculture. He was a pioneer in promoting conservation and soil rejuvenation.〔 He became one of a circle of intellectuals who worked for reformation of various aspects of the South. His colleagues included Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, George Frederick Holmes, James Henry Hammond, and William Gilmore Simms, a poet, novelist and historian.〔Drew Gilpin Faust, ''A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South, 1840-1860'', University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977〕 Their interests spanned southern society, and they promoted stewardship as a justification for slavery, influenced by the evangelical tradition that generated reform in the North as well. They published their recommendations and "jeremiads" in short-lived periodicals and felt unjustly neglected by fellow Southerners.〔(Charles B. Dew, "Review: 'A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South, 1840-1860' by Drew Gilpin Faust" ), ''The Florida Historical Quarterly,'' Vol. 58, No. 4 (April 1980), pp. 445-447〕 For a time in the 1840s, Ruffin was editor of the ''Farmers Register.'' He did serious studies of the possibility of using lime to raise pH in peat soils. Ruffin presented a paper, later expanded into an article for ''American Farmer,'' and eventually as the highly influential book, ''An Essay on Calcareous Manures'' (1852). He explained how applications of calcareous earths (marl) had reduced soil acidity and improved yields of mixed crops of corn and wheat on his land, which had been worn out by two centuries of tobacco monoculture.〔Steven Stoll, ''Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth Century America'' (New York, 2002)〕 He has become known as the "father of soil science" in the United States.〔 During the pre-war years, Ruffin also studied the origin of bogs and published several detailed descriptions of the Dismal and Blackwater swamps in Virginia. Ruffin would later be better known for his substantive contributions to agriculture rather than his claim to have fired the first shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter.〔 Specifically, he aided the Southern economy by proposing new and ingenious ways to rotate and fertilize tobacco crops, such that fields could be used over and over to grow the valuable commodity plant. But his advice on the value of marl was not widely followed. In an 1852 address he warned planters that not paying attention to their soil could lead to ruin, and the South did suffer from exhausted soils in the postwar years.〔Steven Stoll, ''Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth Century America'' (New York, 2002), pp. 165-166〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Edmund Ruffin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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