Incidents of My Life: Edmund Ruffin's Autobiographical Essays

Edmund Ruffin (794-1865) is remembered as an innovative American agriculturalist and pioneer in soil chemistry- and as an advocate of Southern secession.

Here, published for the first time, are the two surviving volumes of Ruffin's manuscript memoirs, written in 1851 with additions in 1853 and 1855. Unlike Ruffin's diaries begun four years later, Incidents of My Life presents the public man, the Ruffin he wanted outsiders and posteriy to see. The volumes recount his career as a scientific farmer, his writing of An Essay on Calcareous Manures, his editing of the Farmers' Register, and the beginnings of his involvement in reform movements in the 1850s.

His recollections were intended as a moral record for his heirs, focusing on himself as a good example. Also included are Ruffin's memoirs of his two daughters who died in 1855 and, as an appendix, his account of the death of his mentor, Thomas Cocke, which are useful sources for mid-nineteenth-century social history.

David F. Allmendinger, Jr. is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Delaware. His previous books include Ruffin: Family and Reform in the Old South and Papers and Scholars: The Transformation of Student Life in Antebellum New England.