Edmund Ruffin Edmund Ruffin ( January 5 , 1794 – June 17 , 1865 ) was a wealthy plantation owner and slaveholder , a Confederate soldier , and an 1850s political activist . He advocated states ' rights , secession , and slavery and was described by opponents as one of the Fire - Eaters . He was an ardent supporter of the Confederacy and a longstanding enemy of the North . He argued for secession for many years before the Civil War . In 1859 he attended the execution of John Brown at Charles Town . In order to witness the event , Ruffin joined the Virginia Military Institute cadet corps and , donning a borrowed overcoat and carrying arms , the aging , white haired , secessionist marched into Charles Town with the young cadets who had been ordered up from Lexington . Ruffin purchased a number of the pikes with which Brown had planned to arm slaves as part of his abortive slave revolt , which started and finished at Harper ' s Ferry earlier that year . Ruffin sent one to the governors of all the slave - holding states as proof of violent Northern enmity against the South and slavery . He was in South Carolina during the period immediately before its secession during the election of 1860 ( according to Swanberg , because his fellow Virginians found him too extreme ) , writing to his son , " The time since I have been here has been the happiest of my life . " Because of his strong secessionist views and the widely held belief that he fired the first shot of the Battle of Fort Sumter , Ruffin is credited as " firing the first shot of the Civil War . " Pre - war life . Ruffin was born at Evergreen Plantation in Prince George County , Virginia . A descendant of William Randolph , he was born into Virginia ' s planter class . He was a farmer and agronomist who helped revolutionize agriculture . For a time , he was editor of the " Farmers Register " and investigated at some length 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 into a highly influential book , " An Essay on Calcareous Manures " in which he explained how applications of calcareous earths ( [ marl ] ) had reduced soil acidity and improved yields of corn and wheat on his land that had been worn out by two centuries of tobacco monoculture . During the pre - war years , he was interested in the origin of bogs and published several detailed descriptions of the Dismal and Blackwater Swamp s . Ruffin would later be better known for his contributions to agriculture and not so much for the claim that he fired the first shot of the Civil War . 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 plant . In 1860 , Ruffin wrote " Anticipations of the Future , to Serve as Lessons for the Present Time " . In it , he pictured what he apprehended would be the result of the election of Republican candidates . He predicted an American Civil War in 1868 following the re - election of President William H . Seward , which would ultimately result in a victory for Southern states . Although most of his predictions were wrong , Ruffin correctly predicted that the war would start with an attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina . Civil War . As the sectional hostilities which led to the Civil War grew in the 1850s , Ruffin left Virginia for South Carolina , where from 1842 to 1843 he had served as an Agricultural and Geological Surveyor , conducting a comprehensive study of the soils in the low country , as he was angry that Virginia had not been the first state to secede from the Union . Ruffin fired one of the first shots on Fort Sumter . He was also the first one to enter Fort Sumter after it fell . Increasingly despondent after the surrender of Robert E . Lee at Appomattox Court House in 1865 , Ruffin decided to commit suicide . On June 17 , 1865 , Ruffin went up to his study with a rifle and a forked stick . He paused to add to his diary a final malediction against " the perfidious Yankee people . " Then he was called away to greet visitors who had arrived at the front door . After they left , Ruffin returned to his study and wrote a final diary entry : Immediately after writing this , Ruffin put the rifle muzzle in his mouth and used the forked stick to manipulate the trigger . The percussion cap went off without firing the rifle , and the noise alerted Ruffin ' s daughter - in - law . But by the time she and his son reached his room , Ruffin had already reloaded the rifle and fired a fatal shot .