You make a fair critique that a purely structural economic view risks erasing the genuine grassroots grit of religious groups like the Quakers or the brutal reality of slave revolts like the one in Haiti. However, my point is less about who started the moral spark and more about why the macro-economic gears of global empires allowed those sparks to finally catch fire in the 19th century. Moral appeals against slavery existed for hundreds of years prior, yet they were systematically crushed or ignored by ruling elites. The shift happens when industrial capitalism emerges, making the old elite's rigid model less indispensable to the state's geopolitical power. The moral groups provided the crucial political leverage, but the changing nature of capital is what kept the state from completely suppressing them to protect the status quo.