By William “Skip” Deegans
In 1809 or 1810, 20-year old Henry Ruffner from Kanawha County enrolled at the Lewisburg Academy. Apparently influenced by the school’s principal, Rev. John McElhenney, Ruffner joined the Lewisburg Presbyterian Church, went on to study at McElhenney’s alma mater, Washington College (now Washington & Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia, and then pursued divinity studies. Ruffner returned to Malden, his hometown, to become minister at the Kanawha Salines Church.
Ruffner went back to Lexington in 1830 when he became president of Washington College. A debate over the issue of slavery took place in Virginia’s General Assembly in 1831-1832, and a slave insurrection was led by Nat Turner in 1831. Efforts to pass emancipation legislation were readily defeated by eastern Virginia slave-holding plantation owners. Along with the percolating issue of emancipation in Virginia was the expanding division between western and eastern Virginia. Westerners felt isolated and disenfranchised by eastern slave owners. Lexington, Virginia, was a hot bed of this dissatisfaction with many citizens advocating that western Virginia, west of the Blue Ridge mountains, secede from Virginia.
In 1847, Washington College president Henry Ruffner wrote, “Address to the People of West Virginia, Shewing That Slavery Is Injurious to the Public Welfare and That It may Be Gradually Abolished Without Detriment to the Rights and Interests of Slaveholders,” that came to be known as The Ruffner Pamphlet. Ruffner was no stranger to slavery. He was a minor slave owner and undoubtedly had firsthand experience of knowing the role slaves had in developing the salt industry in the Kanawha Valley of which his family had helped develop. He argued that slavery sapped the slave owners’ will to work, they were no longer thrifty, and all slaves should be removed from western Virginia. Ruffner’s publication had been endorsed by eleven distinguished Lexingtonians and the Lexington Gazette that published it serially. The Ruffner Pamphlet brought severe reaction from the slave owners of eastern Virginia, politicians, and even his friends.
Dismayed by the reaction and lack of support, Ruffner resigned as president of Washington College in 1848, after having increased enrollment three-fold. He went to Kentucky in 1849 to participate in an unsuccessful emancipation movement and published an anti-slavery broadside, “Justice.” Disillusioned, Ruffner returned to Malden where he spent the remainder of his life writing about Christianity and died there in 1861. Ruffner was, as expressed by local historian Shirley Donnelly, a man ahead of his time.
Sources: The Ruffner Pamphlet of 1847: An Antislavery Aspect of Virginia Sectionalism by William G. Bean, History of the Ruffner Family of Kanawha, The Old Lewisburg Academy Sketches by Marcellus W Zimmerman, and Beckley Post-Herald.
Photo from Wikipedia.
