The mother of twelve-year-old William Wilberforce (1759–1833) was appalled by the news she began to receive about her son. The boy, whom she had sent to live with relatives two years earlier, had changed into something unrecognizable: To his mother’s consternation, he was becoming an evangelical Christian.
Determined to counter the religious enthusiasm instilled by his aunt and uncle, she summoned the child back home. “No pious parent ever labored more to impress a beloved child with sentiments of piety, than they did to give me a taste for the world and its diversions,” Wilberforce later joked about his mother’s family.
But it was too late. Motivated by his deep religious faith, Wilberforce would become one of the most prominent reformers in England, as well as the driving force behind the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. He served for nearly five decades as a member of Parliament and died three days after the bill banning slavery passed.
Wilberforce was born in the English port city of Hull, where his father was a prosperous timber merchant. After his father’s death, he spent two years living with his aunt and uncle, who exposed him to evangelical Christianity. His large inheritance from his grandfather freed him from the need to earn a living, and after graduating from Cambridge, he decided to enter politics.
Britain was by far the largest slave trader in the eighteenth century, and the huge wealth generated by slavery had turned English port towns like Liverpool into thriving metropolises. Initially, Wilberforce faced long odds in his campaign: Merchants claimed that ending slavery would hamper the economy and diminish the profits pouring into England from its colonies.
Still, after entering Parliament in 1780, Wilberforce proposed a number of bills to abolish slavery. He came within a handful of votes of success in 1793, but legislators lost interest after Britain declared war on France later that year. His first major victory would not come until 1807, when, under pressure from a growing antislavery movement, Parliament banned the slave trade.
It would not be until 1833, however, that slavery within the British Empire was abolished. Wilberforce had retired from Parliament in 1825, but word of the vote reached him on his deathbed. He passed away in London at age seventy-three.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- Wilberforce’s life story was made into a 2007 movie, Amazing Grace, directed by Michael Apted (1941–) and starring Ioan Gruffudd (1973–) in the title role.
- Abolition was not Wilberforce’s only cause in Parliament. He was also a keen supporter of rights for animals and cofounded the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
- Bribery was an accepted part of elections in eighteenth-century Britain. When he first ran for Parliament in 1780, Wilberforce promised voters in Hull two guineas each for their support—equivalent to almost $4,000.
