Edmund Ruffin Southerner

by Avery Odelle Craven

REAR COVER Edmund Ruffin (1794-1865) was a Virginia gentleman and one of the most radical of the Southern leaders, and an important Southern agricultural reformer before the Civil War. When the war broke out, it was he who fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, and when his cause failed, he died by his own hand. Edmund Ruffin, A Study in Secession treats him not so much as an individual as the archetype of the emotional Southern radical of his era.

Genres: Biography, American Civil War, History

Unknown Binding

First published June 1, 1966

About the author

Avery O. Craven earned his B.A. from Simpson College in 1908, his M.A. from Harvard University in 1914, and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1923. Craven taught at Simpson College, Michigan State University, and the University of Illinois before joining the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1927. He served as president of the Organization of Southern Historians in 1952, as president of the Mississippi Valley Historical Society and of the Organization of American Historians in 1963–1964.

Reviews

[Miles Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

An aged but still important biography. Craven’s views on race and slavery are somewhat distasteful to modern readers but this is nonetheless a brutally honest biography that confronts the intellectual and social presumptions of the Old South on terms that aren’t anachronistic.