Examination of the Rev. Mr. Harris's Scriptural Researches on the Licitness of the Slave Trade

A searing theological rebuttal from the dawn of the abolition movement. James Ramsay, a former naval surgeon who witnessed the slave trade's horrors firsthand, turns his moral and scriptural expertise against a preacher who dared claim Christianity sanctioned human bondage. The target: Rev. Mr. Harris's infamous argument that scripture legitimized the traffic in African bodies. Ramsay dissects Harris's interpretation word by word, exposing how cherry-picked verses served economic appetite rather than divine truth. But this is no dry academic exercise. Every page carries the weight of a man arguing for the souls of both enslaver and enslaved, insisting that true Christianity demands freedom, not ownership. Published in 1788, on the cusp of Britain's abolition debate, this book represents the ethical arguments that would help tip a nation against its most profitable industry. For readers interested in how moral change actually happens, this is the intellectual battlefield where abolition was first won.