Ruffin, Thomas, 1787-1870

Thomas Ruffin, chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, planter, and politician, served in the North Carolina House of Commons, 1813-1816; as judge of the Superior Court, 1816-1818; as reporter of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, 1820-1822; and as judge of the Superior Court in 1825-1828. Ruffin became president of the State Bank of North Carolina in 1828. He was elected judge of the Supreme Court of North Carolina in 1829 and became chief justice in 1833. He served as chief justice until 1852 and again from 1858 to 1859. Ruffin was president of the North Carolina Agricultural Society, 1854-1860. He was a delegate to the Washington Peace Conference and to the North Carolina Secession Convention in 1861.

Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, 1833-1852 and 1858.

Thomas Ruffin, planter, jurist, and politician, was born 17 November 1787 at Newington in King and Queen County, Va. His parents were Sterling and Alice Roane Ruffin. Sterling Ruffin was a planter in Essex County, Va., who subsequently moved to North Carolina and died in Caswell County.

Thomas Ruffin was educated at Warrenton Academy, 1801-1803, in Warrenton, N.C. He attended Princeton University, 1803-1805, and received his A.B. He read law in Petersburg, Va., under David Robertson, 1806-1807, and in North Carolina under Archibald D. Murphey, 1807-1808. Ruffin was admitted to the bar and moved to Hillsborough, N.C., in 1809.

Ruffin married Anne McNabb Kirkland (1794-1875) on 7 December 1809. Anne Kirkland was the daughter of William Kirkland, a Hillsborough merchant, and Margaret Scott Kirkland. Thomas and Anne Ruffin had fourteen children--Catherine Roane, William Kirkland, Anne, Alice Roane, Sterling, Peter Browne, George McNeill, Elizabeth, Thomas, Susan Mary, Jane Minerva, Martha (Patty) Phebe, John Kirkland, and Sarah (Sally) Nash Ruffin. Anne Ruffin's nephew, Duncan K. MacRae, lived with the Ruffins for several years after his mother died.

For most of his adult life, Ruffin owned two plantations--one in Rockingham County and the Hermitage in Alamance County, N.C. Ruffin was an agricultural innovator and a pioneer in scientific farming. He planted a variety of crops, looked for new ways to improve his soil through fertilizers, and maintained close contact with his cousin Edmund Ruffin, a noted antebellum agricultural reformer. He served as President of the North Carolina Agricultural Society from 1854 until 1860.

While living in Hillsborough, Ruffin served, 1813-1815, in the House of Commons. He was a presidential elector on the Monroe ticket in 1816. He was elected Judge of the Superior Court, 1818; reporter of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, 1820-1822; candidate for presidential elector on the Crawford ticket, 1824; and again as Judge of the Superior Court in 1825. Ruffin resigned from the bench and became President of the State Bank of North Carolina in 1828. His tenure as bank executive was shortlived. He was elected Judge of the Supreme Court of North Carolina in 1829 and became Chief Justice in 1833.

As a jurist, Ruffin was renowned for adapting established English common law standards to the constantly changing judicial conditions in the new United States. Some of his most famous decisions were Hoke v. Henderson, Raleigh and Gaston Railroad Company v. Davis, and State v. Mann . State v. Mann was Ruffin's most notorious case. Ruffin's decision stated that the power of the master must be absolute to render the submission of the slave perfect.

Ruffin retired from the bench in 1852. In 1858, the state legislature again elected him chief justice, but Ruffin resigned after one year.

A Unionist, Ruffin was a North Carolina delegate to the Washington Peace Conference in February 1861, where he sought to avert war. After the failure of this last effort at compromise, Ruffin was a delegate to the North Carolina Secession Convention, where he supported secession based on the right of revolution rather than the right of secession. Once secession was a fact, Ruffin strongly supported the Confederate cause.

After the war, Ruffin moved from the Hermitage to Hillsborough and remained there until his death on 15 January 1870.

For additional information on the Ruffin family and related families, see the Cameron Family Papers (#133) and the Ruffin, Roulhac, and Hamilton Family Papers (#643) in the Southern Historical Collection and Jean Bradley Anderson, The Kirklands of Ayr Mount .

(Biographical information sources: Sean Christopher Walker, The Lawyer may be altogether sunk in the Farmer: Thomas Ruffin, Planter of Antebellum North Carolina (Unpublished Honors Thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994): 66-67; William S. Powell, ed. Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, Volume 5 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994): 266-268).