I want to tell you a rather boring story: the story of the brig Brilliante.  

The hero of this tale is David Ruggles, an extraordinary man. In 1835, at the young age of twenty-five, Ruggles founded the New York Committee of Vigilance, an organization that functioned as a public-facing component of the Underground Railroad in New York City. As far as we know, he was the first black person to edit a magazine and own a bookstore in the United States. He wrote political commentary and satire; spoke at meetings; suffered abuse, violence, and imprisonment; confronted slaveholders in person; and risked his life and his freedom to ferry hundreds of enslaved people to freedom. 

When Ruggles’ life is summarized in this way—as a series of brilliant accomplishments, daring exploits, and historical firsts—it is easy to see why he is important, historical, and heroic. To establish that someone is worth remembering, historians often focus on the most dramatic episodes of that person’s long and complicated life. Popular histories of the Underground Railroad, like Fergus Bordewich’s book Bound for Canaan or Laine Drewery’s 2012 PBS documentary about William Still, tend to give broad summaries of general historical trends punctuated by exciting episodes from the lives of heroic freedom seekers and those who helped them. People appear, their most dramatic and vivid accomplishment or exploit is described, and then, they disappear, perhaps to resurface in another vivid exploit. Even histories published by academic presses, like Eric Foner’s Gateway to Freedom, sometimes rely on these dramatic stories to lend interest to their historical narratives.

This way of telling history has much to recommend it, and the examples I have named are wonderful pieces of historical storytelling that deserve to be read. They are vivid and entertaining; the stories effectively use narrative to illustrate important historical trends. But when historical figures are seen as important primarily because of the most dramatic moments of their lives, we can sometimes make it more difficult to see the hard, repetitive, boring work of making social change. After all, world-changing heroism is not just a matter of dramatic escapades, grand accomplishments, literary achievements, and firsts. History also changes because of strange, flawed, deeply human people doing unremarkable, tedious, and often boring work. 

David Ruggles was an extraordinary man who spent much of his life doing this kind of unglamorous work. Much of Ruggles’ work was like the work of thousands of other activists, men and women, black and white, who created the Underground Railroad through thousands of unrecorded, unremembered, obscure acts of courage, which often resulted in compromised or incomplete victories. At times, this work must have been boring: writing writs of habeus corpus; tracking expenses for Vigilance Committees; typesetting; delivering letters; cooking food to serve to fugitives or cleaning their bedclothes. Of course we should acknowledge Ruggles’ extraordinary feats. But the Underground Railroad could not have existed without the difficult, self-consciously un-historical, often boring, work that served as the movement’s foundation. This is why the (somewhat dull) story of the brig Brilliante is worth your attention.

It was December 1836. The days were short, cold, and dark. It very well might have been raining. Since moving to New York in 1827, Ruggles had become a trusted member of the antislavery activist community in New York City. The previous November, Ruggles founded the New York Committee of Vigilance with a core group of four others. Since then, they had conducted their work of attempting to free fugitive slaves through legal and illegal means. On December 3, Ruggles heard from one of his contacts that a known Portuguese slave ship, the brig Brilliante, had arrived in port. Ruggles wanted to verify this report, so he headed down to the docks and spoke with a white sailor, who confirmed that five enslaved men were on board and that the ship would be in New York City for a few weeks for repairs.

The legal status of enslaved people in New York State was complex. By 1827, slavery was illegal in New York. However, because of an 1817 state law that was still on the books, non-residents could still bring enslaved people into New York for up to nine months without having to free them. But Ruggles reasoned that the captain of the Brilliante couldn’t take advantage of this loophole because the Brilliante was a foreign vessel. Congress had outlawed the international slave trade in 1807, clarifying and extending the prohibition on slave-trading in 1818 and 1820. In short, bringing enslaved men from outside of the U.S. into New York Harbor violated these Federal laws. So, on Friday, December 10, Ruggles headed over to the office of the New York District Attorney, a man named William M. Price. After receiving Ruggles’ report, Price did nothing.

Ruggles returned on Monday, December 12, to check in on Price, who said he would “attend to it.” Ruggles left the District Attorney’s office with instructions from an office assistant to find out the name of the captain of the Brilliante. Ruggles came back again the same day and asked to talk to the Deputy Marshall, who said he didn’t have time deal with the matter that day and that he’d deal with it tomorrow. Ruggles responded, “but she”—the Brilliante—“may be gone.” The Deputy Marshall said that he needed more information and told Ruggles to come to his house that afternoon. But when Ruggles arrived at the house, there was, mysteriously, nobody home. 

Already, you may want to stop reading this article and go do something more entertaining. Ruggles probably would have liked to go and do something else, too. In this story, Ruggles probably spent most of his time walking: from his home to the docks to various offices, homes, and institutions, then back again. In December, New York City was rainy, and sometimes snowy. The streets of New York were famously the filthiest in the United States, too, lined with privies piled high, which overflowed into the streets. Loose pigs and dogs snuffled in the mire. As a black man, Ruggles would not have been allowed to take one of the brand-new horse-drawn streetcars. He would have had to trudge through puddles and filthy snow.

To return to our story: on the evening of Monday, December 12, Ruggles wrote a notice that would appear in the New York Sun the next morning. The note narrated Ruggles’ experience to drum up outrage against the District Attorney’s inaction. On Tuesday morning, Ruggles went to the District Attorney’s office again (another trudge through filthy snow), only to be, as he put it, “rather uncivilly, [shown] the door!” The District Attorney, clenching his fist, bellowed at Ruggles, “go out of MY OFFICE!”

Ruggles published another account of his adventure in the Evening Post. At that point, it was probably embarrassing for the District Attorney’s inactivity to be exposed so publicly. So, by the end of the day Tuesday, the captain of the Brilliante was arrested, and the enslaved men held on his ship were put in a debtor’s prison while the case proceeded. Finally. After all that work, all the stonewalling by officials, all the early-morning treks through the streets of New York, justice would be done! Right?

Of course not. Now there was a court case, which started on December 16. In summary, the captain of the brig argued for his innocence based on a technicality. (The men on board the Brilliante, he argued, should not be considered slaves because they were part of the ship’s crew and would not be sold in the United States.) The District Attorney accepted this argument without questioning the captain or introducing any other testimony, then discharged the captain. But the enslaved men were kept in the city’s debtor’s prison for four days, even though they hadn’t been charged with any crime, probably to prevent volunteers from liberating them.

Ruggles and three others went to the debtor’s prison on December 20, one of the darkest days of the year, probably walking once again through frozen filth. They asked: by whose authority are these men being held? The jail-keeper blamed the Sheriff and Marshall. So Ruggles went over to the Sheriff ’s office. (Another walk). The Sheriff said that he had nothing to do with it. Next, Ruggles went to the District Attorney’s office. (Another walk.) The District Attorney was not in, but his assistant told Ruggles that the men were being held as the captain’s property, which was illegal in the United States, according to Ruggles. Ruggles and his companions went up to see the Deputy Marshall. (Another walk.) He was also not in. They gave up and went home. It must have felt like they had walked all over the city. And their reward was: precisely nothing.

The next day, an unnamed person, likely a member of the Vigilance Committee, stopped the Deputy Marshall on the street and asked why the men were still being held in prison. The Deputy Marshall said that they shouldn’t be in jail and wrote a note ordering that the men be released. Ruggles and his companions brought the note to the jailhouse, but the jailkeeper refused to release the men. Ruggles told the jailkeeper that he had no legal authority to hold the men. The jailkeeper seemed not to care. “I shall risk it,” he said.  Members of the Vigilance Committee filed a writ of habeas corpus. But before they could finish that process, the slaves had already been moved back aboard the ship, where they were now trapped. It was defeat after infuriating defeat.

Finally, on Christmas Eve, a group of armed black New Yorkers (reportedly not including Ruggles) boarded the brig Brilliante and managed to rescue two of the men. When they returned later to get the rest of the men, they were unfortunately rebuffed. After all that work, only two men were freed. After all those days—all those words written, all the walking around the city, contacting official after official—all Ruggles got was a painfully incomplete victory. 

And even that small victory was not without its costs. On December 28, around 1:30 in the morning, Ruggles was awoken by the loud sounds of knocking on his door. Soon, three men had forced open his front door, brandishing pistols and knives, menacing Ruggles’ landlady, and yelling at Ruggles. Luckily, the police soon arrived and arrested two of the men. But when Ruggles went to City Hall the next day to press charges, he was imprisoned for a short time because the constable had an arrest warrant that allowed him to arrest any black person that matched a description of an escaped slave. The men who forced Ruggles’ front door would probably have kidnapped him and sold him into slavery in retaliation for his efforts to free the slaves on the Brilliante.

If all this trudging back and forth between various offices, houses, and jails sounds less like heroic activism to you and more like a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare, that is my point. Slogging for miles through slush and snow in the dark and the cold, following the legal processes, trying to force public servants to do their jobs, knowing the law, understanding court procedures—this is what it was often like to actively work against slavery. Infuriating, complicated, annoying, tedious.

This brand of heroism can be hard to talk about, especially in public-facing histories, which must be not only accurate but entertaining. Sometimes, it seems as if historians work to make the work of activism seem as dramatic and colorful as possible. But it is important, too, to understand that much practical abolitionist work probably didn’t feel heroic or historical or impressive at all. Much of it was the frustrating and incomplete result of sheer doggedness. The story of the brig Brilliante reminds us that history is not just made by firsts: It’s made by repetitive efforts, too. Ruggles’ tedious brand of heroism serves to remind us of the thousands of other acts of quotidian courage performed by thousands of forgotten people, who had jobs and small businesses and children, but who were nonetheless willing to spend hours and hours walking through filthy snow.

Further Reading:

Primary sources:

David Ruggles, The First Annual Report of the New York Committee of Vigilance, for the Year 1837, Together With Important Facts Relative to Their Proceedings (New York: Piercy & Reed, 1837),  https://reader.library.cornell.edu/docviewer/digital?id=may839002#mode/2up.

David Ruggles, The Mirror of Liberty, vol. 1, no. 1 (New York: David Ruggles, 1838).

Edwin Williams and John Disturnell, New York as it is, in 1837 (New York: J. Dusturnell, 1837).

Frank M. O’Brien, The Story of the Sun (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1918).

Laws Relative to Slaves and Servants, Passed by the Legislature of New-York, March 31st, 1817. Together with Extracts from the Laws of the United States, Respecting Slaves (New York: S. Wood & Sons, 1817).

Longworth’s American Almanac, New York Register, and City Directory (New York: Thomas Longworth, 1836).

Secondary sources:

Fergus M. Bordewich, Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement (New York: Amistad, 2006).

Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of America’s Fugitive Slaves (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

Graham Russell Hodges, David Ruggles: A Radical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

Jesse Olsavsky, The Most Absolute Abolition: Runaways, Vigilance Committees, and the Rise of Revolutionary Abolitionism, 1835-1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022).

This article originally appeared in December 2024. 

---

Isaac Kolding is a PhD candidate in English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. His research focuses on the intersection between radical abolitionist rhetoric and literature in the nineteenth-century U.S. His writing appears in American Literature, American Literary Realism, and J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists.