[114] easily be confounded, and to prove that the one from the iron battery, fired by Edmund Ruffin, was actually the first gun on Fort Sumter, I will give comments of the press of that date.
The Charleston Courier said: ‘The venerable Edmund Ruffin, who as soon as it was known a battle was inevitable, hastened over to Morris Island, and was elected a member of the Palmetto Guard, fired the first gun from Steven's iron battery. All honor to the chivalric Virginian! May he live many years to wear the fadeless wreath that honor placed upon his brow on our glorious Friday!’
From the Charleston correspondent of the New York Tribune.
‘The first shot from Stevens' battery, was fired by the venerable Edmund Ruffin, of Virginia. The ball will do more for the cause of secession in the Old Dominion than volumes of stump speeches.’
The Charleston Mercury says, the first gun fired from the iron battery off Cummings Point, was discharged by the venerable Edmund Ruffin. He subsequently shot from all the guns and mortars used during the action.
A Mobile paper had the following:
‘A sublime spectacle.—The mother of the Gracchi, when asked for her jewels, pointed to her children and said: There they are. “ With the same propriety can the ” Mother of States' point to her children as the brighest jewels she possesses. At the call of patriotism they are not laggard in responding to it, and Virginia blood has enriched every battle-field upon American soil. And we thank God the spirit has not departed from her, but burns as brightly in the breasts of her children as in the days of her Washington and her Henry. But of the many bright examples that she has furnished of patriotism the most sublime is the conduct of the venerable Edmund Ruffin, whose head is silvered over by more than eighty winters, who, when the war-cloud lowered over the gallant city of Charleston volunteered as a private, and with his knapsack on his back and musket on his shoulder, tended his services to South Carolina to fight against the aggression upon her rights. It was his hand that pointed and fired the first gun at Fort Sumter. The world has pointed to the conduct of Cincinnatus, who, when his country was invaded by a hostile foe, left his plow in the furrow to take command of her forces, and after he had driven out the invader and restored his country to peace and prosperity, resigned his position and returned to his plow. By this one act he embalmed his memory in the breasts of his countrymen and of all patriots throughout the ’
