Administrative Information

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Preferred Citation

Bland-Ruffin Papers, Accession #3026, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

The papers were a gift to the library in memory of Kirkland Ruffin, M.D. (1862-1923) by his daughters, Mrs. Lawrence Fontaine Tucker, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Mrs. Braden Vandeventer, Virginia Beach, Virginia on 26 August 1976.

Biographical/Historical Information

Theodorick Bland
Born in Prince George County, Virginia, on March 21, 1742, Theodorick Bland was the son of Theodorick Bland of Cawsons on the Appamatox River and Frances (Bolling) Bland. Bland was educated in England, studying first at a school in Wakefield, Yorkshire, from 1753 until 1759. He attended an infirmary in Liverpool as a student of medicine from 1759 to 1761, and then entered the University of Edinborough, from which he recieved an M.D. degree in 1763. Returning to Virginia in 1764, he began practicing medicine in Prince George County. Bland's health suffered as a result of his practice, and in 1771 he retired and became a planter; he married Martha Dangerfield.

Bland strongly supported the American cause during the Revolutionary War. On June 24, 1775, he participated in a raid on the governor's palace in Williamsburg, in which a group of twenty-four patriots removed from arms from the palace to the powder magazine. At the end of that year, he wrote harsh letters in the Virginia Gazette against the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, under the signature of "Cassius". Bland was appointed captain of the 1st Troop of Virginia Cavalry on June 13, 1776, and colonel of the 1st Continental Dragoons on March 31, 1777. He commanded mounted troops in the New Jersey and Philadelphia Campaigns and fought in the battle of Brandywine.

On November 5, 1778, Washington ordered Bland to take command of an escort to conduct the Convention Army troops from Massachusetts and Connecticut to Albermarle County, Virginia. He was then placed in command of the post in Charlottesville, the Albermarle Barracks, where the prisoners were housed, and remained there until November 1779. In 1780, the Virginia General Assembly elected him a delegate to the Continental Congress. At the end of his term, he returned to his plantation, Farmingdale, which had been plundered by the enemy.

Bland served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1786 to 1788, and was an unsuccessful candidate for governor against Edmund Randolph in 1786. He was a member of the Virginia convention of 1788 for the consideration of the proposed Federal Constitution, and voted against its adoption. Elected a member of the first House of Representatives, he died while attending the session in New York on June 1, 1790.

Edmund Ruffin
Edmund Ruffin was born on January 5, 1794, in Prince George County, Virginia. His parents were George and Jane (Lucas) Ruffin. He was educated at home until the age sixteen when he entered the College of William and Mary. Ruffin soon was suspended, however, for neglecting his studies. He served as a private in the War of 1812, but saw no active duty. On returning home, he married Susan Travis of Williamsburg and took charge of his father's Coggin's Point Farm.

Ruffin grew increasingly concerned about the unproductive land of the Tidewater region, and the seemming indefferencte of most other planters. The soil had worn out from continual planting of the same crop and many persons were moving westward. Ruffin attempted to solve the problem on his own farm by sturdy and experimentation. After reading Sir Humphrey Dave's Elements of Agricultural Chemistry, he speculated that vegetable acids made the soil sterile and unable to return manure. He decided that the use of marl (a mixture of clay and carbonate of lime), fertilizers, crop rotation, drainage, and proper plowing would revitalize the soil. Ruffin's experiments proved extremely successful, and in 1818 he presented his findings to the Prince George Agricultural Society and then printed them in expanded form in the American Farmer. In 1832, he published a book about his theories, An Essay on Calcareous Manures, and in the following year launched an agricultural journal, the Farmer's Register. The journal was extremely influential in spreading Ruffin's methods of scientific farming throughout the South. Ruffin served on the first Virginia State Board of Agriculture, and in 1842 became agricultural surveyor of South Carolina. He was elected the first president of the Virginia State Agricultural Society in 1845, but declined because he felt that his work was not sufficiently appreciated in his home state. He reconsidered, however, and took the post in 1852. He actively encouraged experimental farming and agricultural education, and continued to write and speak extensively about agriculture.

Ruffin was always interested in politics, but his tenure in the Virginia Senate (1823-1826) left him disgusted with politicians. He was first a Whig, but became a Democrat when the slavery and states' rights clash developed. An ardent defender of slavery and one of the first secessionists in Virginia, Ruffin discussed his ideas in De Bow's Review and the Southern Literary Messenger. He also published serveral pro-slavery pamphlets. He was an advocate of direct trade with Europe, attended three Southern commercial conventions, and started the League of United Southerners. Hoping that John Brown's raid would galvanize the South, he secured Brown's pikes and gave one to the governor of each Southern state. Ruffin was invited to sit in three seceding conventions, and while serving as a volunteer with the Palmetto Guard of Charleston, was allowed to fire the first shot from Morris Island against Fort Sumter. He joined with the Palmetto Guards again as a "temporary" private at the First Battle of Manassas.

During the Civil War, Ruffin travelled throughout the South, visiting many military camps, despite his failing health. He became increasingly pessimistic about the outcome of the war after the Battle of Gettysburg. Northern soldiers occupied his plantation, Malbourne in Hanover County, and ransacked his library. Totally devastated by the collapse of the Confederacy, Ruffin committed suicide on June 18, 1865, and was buried in the family cemetery at Marlbourne. He was survived by three of his eleven children.

Scope and Content Information

The Bland-Ruffin Collection, 1741-1788;1859-1865 (100 items) consists of letters and papers of Revolutionary soldier Theodorick Bland and secessionist Edmund Ruffin, and relates primarily to their wartime experiences. Students of both the American Revolution and the Civil War would find this collection very valuable, since it contains letters written by leaders of both periods and some first-person narratives of military events. The majority of the letters were written to, rather than by, Bland and Ruffin, and over two-thirds pertain to the Civil War.

Bland himself wrote to the loyalist Reverend Jacob Duché, attacking his views and character, to St. George Tucker (in cipher), to Lieutenant Colonel Muir, and to his wife Martha "Patsy" (Dangerfield) Bland. In a circular letter, Governor Thomas Jefferson requested that Bland provide information about the arms furnished by his regiment to the Continental army, and Colonel Armand (Marquis de la Roulerie Tuffin) expressed his displeasure at the failure of the Continental Congress to promote him. Hessian officers Major General von Riesedel and General Specht wrote to Bland concerning affairs of the Convention Army at the Albermarle Barracks. Other correspondents of note are Richard Bland, Edmund Randolph, and John Page, the last offering an interesting account of Benedict Arnold's invasion of Virginia in 1781. In addition to the letters, the Bland material includes a number of papers relating to Prince George County. There is a fragment of a loyalist petition circulated in the summer of 1781 by Archibald Robertson, some political lampoons, a few military documents, and one unidentified drawing.

The letters to Edmund Randolph form a more cohesive unit than the Bland papers, and document Ruffin's unflagging support of the Confederacy. P.G.T. Beauregard, S.W. Ferguson, and other military leaders provided Ruffin with passes to various military encampments, and individuals sought his help in obtaining appointments or transfers. In a letter to C.G. Memminger, the Confederate secretary of the treasury, on January 22, 1864, enclosing a check for four hundred dollars, Ruffin stated that he would contribute as much of his income as possible to the cause. Letters of thanks from Charles Marbeth, mayor of Charleston, and R.R. Harrison of Fredericksburg indicate that Ruffin was true to his word. Most of the largely personal letter from such individuals as Rebecca Hewitt to Ruffin comment on the course of the war and its impact on daily life. Of special interest is a letter from Captain John Scott to Ruffin, enclosing a copy of the detailed report he submitted to General Holmes on the First Battle of Manassas. Completing the collection is a fragment of a note apparently written by Ruffin shortly before his death, in which he states that he wishes to be buried in South Carolina, and hopes that the next generation will uphold his reputation.

Arrangement

The papers were in chronological order when they arrived at the library. The correspondence and papers of Bland precede those of Ruffin, and both groups are arranged chronologically.

Other Descriptive Data

Charles Campbell found the Bland papers at Cawson's, but unable to carefully examine, wrote to Edmund Ruffin about them. Campbell subsequently published an edition of The Bland Papers. A number of the letters in our collection appear in this volume (available in the McGregor Library A 1840 .B53). In a note, Ruffin states that he appended to the original Bland papers some additional items of related interest, "derived from different sources."