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 the
Confederate States of America.
By radically urging secessionism in the South, the
Fire-Eaters demonstrated the high level of sectionalism 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 as Edmund Ruffin, Robert Rhett, Louis T. Wigfall, and William Lowndes
Yancey, this group was dubbed "Fire-Eaters" by northerners. At an
1850 convention in Nashville, Tennessee, the Fire-Eaters urged southern
secession, citing irrevocable differences between North and South, and they
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 later half of the 1850s, the group reemerged. They
used several recent events for propaganda, among them "Bleeding
Kansas" and the Sumner-Brooks Affair 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. Wigfall, for one, actively
encouraged an attack on Fort Sumter to prompt Virginia and other upper Southern
States to secede as well. 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 American Civil War. Their influence waned quickly after the
start of major fighting.
