The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

by Erik Larson

By now the old warrior had grown weary. For about a year, Ruffin had been living at a plantation in Amelia County, Virginia, that Edmund, Jr., had acquired as a safe haven away from likely zones of conflict closer to Richmond. Loneliness per se did not afflict him; but age, various infirmities, and seemingly boundless tedium had worn him down. “Under these circumstances,” he wrote, “my life has become a wearisome and galling burden to myself, and its termination, if to be speedy and painless, has already been more desired than dreaded.” He added: “I cannot die too soon.” The time had come, he decided, to end his own life. He could not resist one final wail of anti-Union fury. In the last formal paragraph of his diary, he wrote, “I here declare my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule—to all political, social and business connection with Yankees—and to the Yankee race. Would that I could impress these sentiments, in their full force, on every living southerner, and bequeath them to every one yet to be born!”