Putting up Resistance: David Ruggles, Organizer
In 1844 and 1850, black residents of Northampton, many formerly enslaved, organized public meetings to rally the town to take action against pro-slavery federal policy that cruelly threatened the freedom of those who had escaped the horror of slavery and had found relative peace in the free north. At the end of the newspaper announcements, they boldly published their names, a risky act at the time. David Ruggles, a veteran antislavery activist born free in Connecticut, but the grandson of an enslaved family in that state, was a leader, organizer, and mentor first in 1830s New York and later in 1840s Northampton.
David Ruggles (shown here in 1838 between abolitionists Isaac Hopper and Barney Corse) was a daring agent of the Underground Railroad in New York City, assisting over 600 fugitives to freedom. He was an anti-slavery publisher and owner of the first black-owned bookstore in the U.S., (which was burned down by a racist mob in 1835). Ruggles was also reviled by New York anti-abolitionists for his confrontational activism. A founder of the New York Vigilance Committee, he exposed and stood up to "the kidnapping club" who captured escaped slaves and free blacks alike, spiriting them to southern states to be sold into slavery. It was Ruggles' skill as an organizer of Black Americans that was on display soon after his arrival at the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (NAEI) in November, 1842.
In 1842, broken down in health and nearly blind, 33-year-old David Ruggles sought refuge at the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, (NAEI,) a utopian Garrisonian abolitionist community based on racial, gender, and economic equality. Ruggles' militancy during his New York years was probably questioned by fellow members and the antislavery movement leader, William Lloyd Garrison, a non-resistant pacifist.
In spite of his maladies and weak eyesight, Garrison and Community members called on Ruggles to chair the August 1, 1843 meeting downtown to commemorate the anniversary of the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire in 1833.
Stephen C. Rush addressed the August 1, 1843 emancipation commemoration along with Garrison, Wm. F. Parker, and other Community members. Rush had escaped slavery, and was guided to the NAEI. There he not only improved his literacy skills, but became an antislavery speaker and leader. It is not surprising that several fugitives from slavery like Rush made their way on the Underground Railroad to David Ruggles at the NAEI, for respite and support. Some stayed on to build their new life in Northampton while others continued on, sometimes to Canada which, as part of the British empire, had outlawed slavery. Rush went onto participate in the 1844 call to action, and signed a local petition in 1848, but appears to have left the area by the 1850 meeting, leaving no known record of where he moved to.
In 1844, David Ruggles and his Committee for Arrangements organized a "Mass Meeting" to protest the arrest Torrey and Walker for helping enslaved people escape. The minutes of the September 2 meeting taken by S. C. Rush and D. Freeman were published in the Liberator on September 27, 1844: "Resolved, that this meeting deeply sympathizes with our brethren in their suffering, and deem it the duty of the friends of human rights to afford them speedy relief....the resolution was unanimously adopted, and a contribution raised." The adjourned meeting resumed at 7 pm with Ruggles again in the chair. A resolution supporting N. H. Fountain, a colleague of Walker's, was passed and a collection taken up for him and his family. Ruggles' skills were evident both in the promotion and in the step-by-step planning.
In what must be an early use of the term, the "self-emancipated" John Brown was steered to Northampton by David Ruggles around 1836. John Payson Williston helped settle Brown and his wife Elizabeth on Cherry Street. John Brown died on July 13, 1848. His obituary was written by Williston who also served as executor. "He saved enough money to pay for a snug little house, and insisted on being taxed, that he might become a voter. It had been the custom of our Assessor not to tax colored men, as they would, if they became poor, be town paupers. In compliance with his request, however, he was taxed, and he always exercised his right in voting against slavery." Small wonder such a man would join in public protest with Ruggles and others.
Henry Anthony and John Williams, age 40 and 36 respectively were members of the "Committee for Arrangements" appointed at the first 1844 meeting. They were also among the ten "fugitives from southern slavery" who published a call in both the Hampshire Gazette and Northampton Courier for Northampton to meet in resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law on October 15, 1850. David Ruggles' death on December 16, 1849 left it to others to step up when the time came to resist. Using Ruggles' play book, the October 23, 1850 meeting, called to order by John Williams, attracted a large crowd of Blacks and whites.
By 1845, the utopian community where David Ruggles, Sojourner Truth, Stephen Rush and many others had made their home was in serious financial jeopardy. NAEI president George W. Benson came up with a radical idea. "Last evening there was another meeting. A proposition was submitted by Mr. Mack to sell the factory and two thirds of the water and a certain portion of land and retaining enough for the Association to live upon the Grist Mill and Saw Mill and have those that wished go on together this gave rise to a discussion upon our affinities and differences—religious opinions diet amusements and many other things..." (Dolly Stetson to James Stetson, May 4, 1845) These are among the dissentions over seemingly trivial issues that would lead to the NAEI's demise along with accumulated debt.
Much had changed in what is now the village of Florence between 1844 and 1850. The June 29, 1846 sale of the silk mill and 100 acres to evangelical abolitionists, J. P. Williston, Samuel Williston, and the Hayden brothers, put the living situation of NAEI members into turmoil. George W. Benson left his post as president of the NAEI to join the industrialists as manager of the Bensonville Manufacturing Company. The NAEI disbanded on November 7, 1846 but many members stayed on in what they termed "The Neighborhood Community." They continued in the struggle for equal rights for all generating several petitions like the one pictured at left.
During the seven years he lived in Florence, David Ruggles first learned to use the watercure to treat his own ailments and then created a professional water cure practice. That Ruggles could become so preoccupied with his watercure startup that he tamped down his anti-slavery activism seems hard to believe. But one should not underestimate how committed he became to his new career and how townspeople and visitors came to depend on him. His friend Frederick Douglass respected his decision to concentrate on his role as Doctor Ruggles, "His whole soul is in his present profession – and I would as readily trust him with my breath now – as I did with my liberty years ago."
Joseph Willson, Basil Dorsey, Henry Anthony, Lewis French, William C. Randell, and William Wright were from the village that would be dubbed Florence in 1852. Their call to fellow citizens to resist the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was published in the Northampton Courier on October 15, 1850, followed by another article on the eve of the meeting: It is hoped, fellow-citizens, that all, without distinction of party or sect, will make the case of these unhappy people their own,— that each will imagine himself to be thus liable to be torn from family and friends, and all they hold dear upon earth…Shall these poor fugitives be thus barbarously and wickedly taken from amongst us, and sent into endless slavery? Or shall they be assured of our sympathy and our protection in the peaceful enjoyment of their natural and inalienable rights?
The meeting was held on October 23. William Parker, a former member of the Association, who had spoken at the West Indies Emancipation Day rally in 1843 and was a die-hard Garrisonian radical, took the opportunity to denounce the clergy’s role in sustaining the slave power. Remember, this was downtown Northampton, where conservative evangelism still held sway.
The comity required in a meeting of citizens called 'irrespective of party or sect.," must exclude reflections on any party, — whigs, free soilers, democrats, Garrisonians, clergymen, lawyers and physicians....The motion for dissolution was made under the impressiom that order and harmony could be restored after the outrage occurred which disturbed the meeting. Unus
We are fortunate Florence has so many dwellings formerly owned by African Americans during this pivotal period in our country’s history. Even in 1860, after the exodus brought on by the Fugitive Slave Act, Black families made Florence home, circled in blue on the map. Of the six Florence signers of the 1850 call to meeting only the house where Lewis French lived is gone, burned down in the early 1970s. Florence never experienced the urban renewal of the 1960s that destroyed enclaves of settled freedom seekers, like in nearby Springfield where construction of Interstate 91 wiped out the homes of the League of Gileadites who resisted the FSL as strenuously as in Northampton.
We will never know what part David Ruggles could have played in the resistance to the infamous Fugitive Slave Law. Though he was seeing patients as late as September of 1849, the ailments that had dogged him since NYC days caught up to him. His death on December 16, 1849 at the age of 39 left his fellow Black citizens without the leader they had looked to since 1844. John Williams called the October 23, 1850 meeting to order but white ally William Clark took over the chair. The Northampton Ten fugitives turned to white lawyer Charles Phelps Huntington to prepare the resolutions. Ruggles could easily have served in both capacities. He may also have been able to keep his fellow former NAEI member Parker from blowing up the meeting.
Thomas H. Jones escaped slavery in North Carolina as a stow away to New York City, then went to Salem, and New Brunswick where he found refuge after the Fugitive Slave Law took effect. "In the year 1854 I returned to the States ...On arriving in Boston, I went first to the office of my old friend Wm. Lloyd Garrison. He greeted me with all his old-time cordiality. ...He informed me of an anti-slavery convention soon to be held in Cummington, Mass ... and that Samuel May and Wendell Phillips were to speak. Accordingly, I took the cars and rode as far as Northampton, and then walked the rest of the way, a distance of eighteen miles....I took a little time to rest, and then spoke briefly of my great pleasure in meeting my old friends again, and of my purpose to continue my labors in behalf of my brethren and sisters in bondage..."
