A swaggerer; a braggadocio; a Captain Bobadil. The Fire-eaters of South Carolina and Georgia precipitated the Civil War.
1847. He is a regular fire-eater; can hit the ace of hearts, nine times out of ten, at fifteen paces.—J. K. Paulding, ‘American Comedies,’ p. 205 (Phila.).
1852. [One of the newspapers] has called me, I am told, the head “fire eater” of my district.—Mr. Jackson of Georgia, House of Repr., March 16: Cong. Globe, p. 344, App.
1858. I tell you, southern men, I am ready to strike hands with fire-eaters, and exterminate the race. It is becoming extinct.—Mr. Burlingame of Mass., the same, March 31: id., p. 290, App.
1859. With all my opposition to your institution, I can hardly doubt that if … my lot had been cast among you, my opinions might be different, and I might be here, perhaps, as fierce a fire-eater as I am now defending against fire.—Mr. Wade of Ohio, U.S. Senate, Dec. 14: id., p. 143.
1859. The politicians read them, and their wrathful, fire-eating visages relaxed to a broad grin.—Seba Smith, Preface to ‘Major Jack Downing’s Letters.’
1860. [They] had determined to leave all the speaking to the Southern Fire-Eaters.—O. J. Victor, ‘The History … of the Southern Rebellion,’ i. 65.
1860. [There were] several “Fire-Eaters,” or peremptory secessionists.—Id., i. 66.
1863. The new-comer proved to be a very genial and agreeable gentleman, an F. F. V., and, as he pleasantly acknowledged, a Southern Fire-Eater.—Hawthorne, ‘Our Old Home,’ i. 55. (N.E.D.)
1910. When one has read all that [Mrs. Pryor] and her children endured while the war lasted, one is ready for an end of horrors and sufferings; but there were yet to follow years of extreme hardship and poverty, while Gen. Pryor slowly forced his way into a new career as a lawyer in New York City. It is a record to make one hesitate before saying a light word even of the “fire-eaters”—for in the fifties Gen. Pryor was regarded, the country over, as hardly second in that rôle to Yancey himself.—N.Y. Evening Post, March 28.
