- Fire-Eaters
In
United States history, the term Fire-Eaters refers to a group of extremist pro-slavery politicians from the South who urged the separation of southern states into a new nation, which became known as theConfederate States of America .Impact
By radically urging
secession ism in the South, the Fire-Eaters demonstrated the high level ofsectionalism existing in the U.S. during the 1850s, and they materially contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War (1861-1865). As early as 1850, there was a southern minority of pro-slavery extremists who did much to weaken the fragile unity of the nation. Led by such men asEdmund Ruffin ,Robert Rhett ,Louis T. Wigfall , andWilliam Lowndes Yancey , this group was dubbed “Fire-Eaters” by northerners. At an 1850 convention inNashville, Tennessee , the Fire-Eaters urged southern secession, citing irrevocable differences between North and South, and they further inflamed passions by usingpropaganda against the North. However, theCompromise of 1850 and other moderate counsel, including that from PresidentJames Buchanan , kept the Fire-Eaters cool for a time.In the later half of the 1850s, the group reemerged. They utilized several recent events for propaganda, among them "
Bleeding Kansas " and the Sumner-Brooks Affair to accuse the North of trying to immediately abolishslavery . Using effective propaganda against 1860 presidential candidateAbraham Lincoln , the Fire-Eaters were able to convince many southerners of this false accusation. They first targetedSouth 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 theConfederate States of America and to theAmerican Civil War . Their influence waned quickly after the start of major fighting.Notable Fire-Eaters
*
Nathaniel Beverly Tucker
*John A. Quitman
*Thomas C. Hindman
*William Porcher Miles
*Laurence M. Keitt
*James Dunwoody Brownson DeBow (publisher ofDeBow's Review )
*Robert Rhett External links
* [http://members.tripod.com/~greatamericanhistory/gr02014.htm Three Fire-Eaters]
* [http://enterprise.is.tcu.edu/~swoodworth/Walther.html Nine fire-eaters - biographical sketches from "The Fire-Eaters" by Eric H. Walther, 1992]
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