The period surrounding the American Revolution witnessed a profound, yet ultimately tempered, rise of Moses as a symbol of liberation within the transatlantic and early American discourse on slavery. Early in the eighteenth century, Quaker abolitionists like John Hepburn, Benjamin Lay, and Anthony Benezet intensified their critique of chattel slavery, consistently invoking Exodus 21’s prohibition against man-stealing and Deuteronomy 15’s principle of sabbatical release to frame immediate or gradual abolition as a Christian duty. This moral thrust converged with Revolutionary rhetoric, as figures like Samuel Hopkins and Jonathan Edwards Jr. challenged the biblical justifications for American slavery, though often conceding in the process that Mosaic Law permitted a regulated form of servitude. Across the Atlantic, William Wilberforce marshaled Christian moral duty against Mosaic legalism to help secure the 1807 ban on the slave trade while opponents continued to effectually cite Mosaic precedents for perpetual bondage. Meanwhile, this emancipationist momentum was largely contained in the post-Revolutionary U.S. where Southern leaders secured constitutional protections for slavery through partial support from Mosaic Law. By the early 1800s, Southern emancipationists had to flee their plantations while religious bodies like the Presbyterian Synod of New York and Philadelphia retreated from anti-slavery positions in the face of religious, social and political pressure, demonstrating the fragile nature of the “Spirit of ‘76” and the continued power of pro-slavery interpretations of the Mosaic code.