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Fire-eatersBy radically urging secessionism in the US South, the Fire-Eaters demonstrated the high level of sectionalism existing in the US during the 1850s, and materially contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War (1861-1865). As early as 1850 there was a southern minority of proslavery extremists who did much to weaken the fragile unity of the nation. Led by such men as Edmund Ruffin, Robert Rhett, Louis T. Wigfall, and William Yancey, this group was dubbed Fire-Eaters by northerners. At a 1850 convention in Nashville, Tennessee, the Fire-Eaters urged southern secession, citing irrevocable differences between North and South, and further inflamed passions by using propaganda against the North. However, the Compromise of 1850 and other moderate counsel, including that from President James Buchanan, kept the Fire-Eaters cool for a time. In the latter half of the 1850s the group reemerged. They utilized several recent events for propaganda, among them Bleeding Kansas and the Sumner-Brooks Affair (1856), to accuse the North of trying to immediately abolish slavery. Using effective propaganda against 1860 presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, the Fire-Eaters were able to convince many southerners of this false accusation. They first targeted South Carolina, which passed an article of secession in December, 1860. Thus, the Fire-Eaters helped to unleash a chain reaction that eventually led to the formation of the Confederate States of America and to the Civil War. External links *Nine fire-eaters - biographical sketches from The Fire-Eaters by Eric H. Walther, 1992
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