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Item# 19395
Price: $1,000
CSA 3, 2¢ green, 3 large to into at top due to rough separation, tied bold blue PETERSBURG Va. / AUG / 21 cds on drop cover to Mrs. Julian C. Ruffin, Care of Col. R. M. Harrison, Petersburg, Va.; TURNED and addressed to Mrs. Julian C. Ruffin c/o Mrs. David Callender, Petersburg, Va. with note at top “Please send this the first opportunity you have,” but never postally used. Original long two-page adversity letter headed Petersburg, April 12th, 1864, in which “J.C.R.” says “I am sorry, my dear Lottie, that I gave you reason to expect me home today…only three men are permitted to come to P(etersburg) a day.” Mostly family and planting info - letter written in clear pencil on blue Farmer’s Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Virginia printed form. 1999 CSA certificate 3439, SCV $3,500. $1,000.
Julian Calx Ruffin (1821-1864) enlisted August 10, 1863, as a private and was mustered into Batty B Company, Virginia 12th Light Artillery. He was a graduate of William & Mary College. He rose to captain and was killed at the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff 16 May 1864 at age 42. He was married to Charlotte (Lottie) Stockdale Meade in 1852. He was a son of Edmund Ruffin (1794-1865), a distinguished agriculturalist and a firebrand, who traveled throughout the South expressing his beliefs that the northern and southern states should be separated. Ruffin, as an honorary member of the Palmetto Guard, is often credited with firing the first shot that commenced the Civil War. However, it appears he did not fire the initial shot, but rather his was one of the first. With declining health, together with his depleted fortune, he received the news of the April 9, 1865, surrender of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia poorly. On June 17, 1865, after composing an entry in his diary that expressed his "unmitigated hatred of Yankee rule," he ended his life by his own hand by gunshot, wrapped in a Confederate flag! The Ruffins were related to a slew of famous people from Thomas Jefferson to Robert E. Lee.