ous, because plants receive nitrogen essential for growth from the air, via
rainfall, and from phosphorus and other minerals present in soil already.
Ruffin, himself a champion of marl, an inorganic manure, may have been
charmed by apparent vindication, but one must remember that the Ameri-
can remained in theory and practice a consistent advocate ofallmanuring
—dung, green, and calcareous. This combination of organic and inorganic
management of soil fertility would be validated after Ruffin’s death, at the
Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester.^8
Meanwhile Ruffin became a minor celebrity. One of his most recep-
tive distant readers and correspondents was James Henry Hammond, an
innovative planter by the Savannah River. Hammond happened also to be
governor of South Carolina when Ruffin was closing downFarmers’ Regis-
terin . So Ruffin eagerly accepted Hammond’s invitation to conduct
a geological survey of the Palmetto State. The Virginian never quite com-
pleted his planned tour—weather and illness intervened—yet he submit-
ted a substantial report that (hardly unexpected) demonstrated acidity in
South Carolina soils and identified several good native sources of marl.
Now Ruffin returned to farming, this time at the Pamunkey River’s navi-
gable head just north of Richmond, on a plantation he inevitably (again)
named Marlbourne. There was now private work to be done: Marlbourne
was inadequately drained and (of course) marled. Yet Ruffin still found time
to travel, observe, correspond and advise, and promote scientific agricul-
ture as a public writer. In , a western admirer, J. D. B. De Bow, editor
and publisher of the influentialDe Bow’s Reviewin New Orleans, printed a
laudatory biographical sketch (written by one of Ruffin’s Virginia admirers)
that declared Ruffin the South’s premier ‘‘agriculturist.’’
During the s Ruffin also became one of the nation’s most aggres-
sive and tenacious defenders of slavery, white supremacy, and ‘‘southern
rights.’’ He was a ‘‘fire-eater’’ for a separate slaveholders’ republic who at
last, early in , accepted another invitation from South Carolina. This
was the courtesy of honorary membership in the state’s militia at Charles-
ton, and there, in April, after a warning flare sent up by regular Confeder-
ate artillerymen, Ruffin apparently touched fire to fuse and sent the first
hostile projectile hurtling toward Fort Sumter. The old man had a famous
photographic portrait made of himself about this time, with his straight
white hair falling on the shoulders of his coat, his expression implacable,
and his rifle at hand. Now his celebrity was magnified enormously. Sixteen
months later, when Yankee gunboats stopped by the plantation of Ruffin’s