Chapter 17 retraces the Groupe de Coppet’s work toward abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, from Staël’s parents in the 1780s to Staël’s children in the 1840s. What links these fighters is Staël. Staël’s gender, her religion, her life of revolution and exile all fed the flame that drove her struggle forward. Staël’s thought, trained in the Enlightenment, strives constantly toward universal and timeless truths, which brings a special excitement and power to her discussion of freedom and its antithesis, slavery, in the age of the Déclaration des droits de l’homme. In the history of abolitionism, many aspects of Staël’s thought are curious: her broad refusal of the slave-despot metaphor; her geographical and historical sweep; and her refusal of topoi designed to short-circuit discussion, like the Christian slaves in Algiers. Thirty-odd years of thought about freedom will produce some words on slavery, but Staël and her circle joined deeds to words.