FIRING THE FIRST SHOT FOR C. S. A..
Dr. J. H. Ramsay, of Seaboard, N. C., wrote Col. Woodward, of Wilmington, two years ago:
I went from Jackson, Northampton County, N. C., to Charleston, N. C., in March, 1861, with letters of introduction from Hon. M. W. Ransom to Mr. J. Johnson Pettigrew, then a lawyer in Charleston, and later a general in 'the Confederate army. I also had a letter to Col. Robert Alston, then a practising lawyer 10 Charleston. I failed to find Mr. Pettigrew, but Col. Alston advised me to join the Palmetto Guards, G. B. Cuthbert, captain, who were on the eve of going into camp on Morris Island. I joined the company about March 5 or 6, 1861, enlisting as a private, with the understanding that I should be discharged when my state should secede. I labored with the boys, carrying sand in bags to build the earthworks where our battery was to be stationed, until the work was completed. Fora few days after our three-gun battery (known as Steven's Iron Battery on Cumming's Point, Morris Island) was completed, guns mounted, and all ready for action our company did only guard and drill duty, until the attack on Sumter.
On the morning of April 12, 1861 (I think it was on Friday), we were ordered to man our guns; and about half-past four on the morning of the 12th of April, 1861, after a signal gun, Gun No. 1, a ten-inch Columbiad, opened fire on Fort Sumter, and I am sure that the first lanyard was pulled by the Hon. Edmund Ruffin, of Virginia, who was a private in the Palmetto Guards. He was a most dignified and venerable yet active and gallant man of quite or nearly seventy years of age, whose long, white, and silken locks fell upon his shouiders, as straight and as graceful as those of a boy.
In a very short while after the firing of the first gun —but a minute or two, at most—lI pulled the lanyard that sent another ten-inch shot into Sumter, and continued firing at short intervals of rest until the surrender of the fort, which occurred, say between 3:39 and 4 P.M. on Saturday, the 13th of April, 1861. Iam not positive that I fired the second gun, but I think I did; but this I do know: I was 'the only soldier in 'he company from North Carolina, and hence can justly claim the honor of being the first from my state to fire a gun in the Confederate war.