Beard, an English Unitarian minister, wrote this biography for the fiftieth anniversary of Toussaint Louverture's death and aimed it at readers arguing about slavery in the United States. His purpose is openly polemical. By narrating one life he means to show that a man born into bondage could govern, command armies and act on Christian principle, and thereby to dissolve the prejudice on which he thought servitude depended. The account moves from the island's geography and the Spanish destruction of its native population through Toussaint's upbringing, his reading of Raynal, his protection of his owners during the 1791 rising, his shifting alliances with Spain and republican France, his defeat of the British and of Rigaud, the constitution of 1801, and his death in a French prison. Beard leans on French sources while complaining that they serve planter or mixed-race interests, and he treats scripture itself as an abolitionist argument.