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> 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.

This sentence kind of contradicts the author's point though? After all that tedious work within the legal system it wasn't even procedure that got any of these men freed, but actual direct action.

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If anything it reinforces it. Imagine grinding away at a tiresome game, selecting each move perfectly, yet mostly losing. The few Ws you do eke out are often the result of external forces you had no control over. And doing that all your life.

Doing the right thing even when your actions don't matter, when you'll probably fail, and when most people won't thank you for it, is possibly the purest form of heroism.

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