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Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1., Chapter 2: preliminary rebellious movements. (search)
e distinction of having raised the first spadefull of earth in the construction of military works for the assault on Fort Sumter, and also of having fired the first shot at that fortification. Ruffin was in Richmond at the close of the following summer, and visited the National prisoners who ware captured at the battle of Bull's Run in July. Hie told them that he was then a resident of Charleston, in South Carolina, and boasted that he was the person who fired the first shot at Sumter. Mr. Ely, member of Congress, who was among the prisoners, speaks of him in his Journal, kept while in confinement in Richmond, as a patriarchal citizen, whose long locks extended over his shoulders, whitened by the snows of more than seventy winters. Ruffin did not appear prominently in the war that ensued. He survived the conflict, in which he lost all of his property. On Saturday, the 17th of June, 1865, he committed suicide by blowing off the top of his head with a gun, at the residence of hi