William Wilberforce

The time had come. Men and women on both sides of the Atlantic knew that the horrible, degrading, and hateful business of slavery had to come to an end. The abolition movement grew daily in strength of numbers and was made up of men and women of goodwill, of freed slaves, reformed slave traders, clergymen of many faiths, and former slaves. They had all set for themselves the task of ridding the world of this crime against humanity. But how would they focus their energies? Who would carry their cause to the seat of government? One man came to see this work as his destiny. That man was William Wilberforce. This is his story. This is his legacy. Any form of slavery is always deplorable, but the conditions of the legal and lucrative transatlantic slave trade itself were infinitely worse. The slave ships would leave from Bristol or London or Liverpool, taking their cargoes, largely of manufactured goods, to West Africa. Once there, the ships would exchange the goods for slaves. Some of the slaves were prisoners of tribal wars or condemned criminals. But the vast majority were ordinary innocent people who were torn from home and family. They were kidnapped, branded, flogged into a state of numbed submission. Then they were loaded onto canoes that would take them out to a ship. Once there, they were crammed into the hold, where they were kept in chains, each of them confined to a space smaller than a coffin. Thomas Clarkson, one of the leading British abolitionists, drew a diagram showing how 450 slaves were transported on what was known as the Middle Passage, the journey from Africa to the West Indies. On an earlier voyage, the slave ship, the Brooks, had carried 609. Occasionally, the slaves were taken up on deck for exercise, but most of the time was spent in appalling heat, suffering agonies of dysentery and seasickness, lying in an atmosphere so fetid that it gutted the few candles lit to curb the stench. A slave ship could be smelled across a mile of ocean. Many died in agony. Many others were driven insane. In such cases, they were thrown overboard. The journey took at least a hundred days, and if the weather was bad, the journey could last a lot longer. Slavery is not just a degrading relationship in itself. It degrades the mind and the heart of the slave. The slave suffers from fear, from complete lack of what we now, I suppose, call self-worth. The slave is subjected to utterly unjustifiable, unreasonable terrors in the whole process of captivity. If you take the word slavery away from this whole story, what was it really about? It was about the wicked traffic in human beings. It was about the destruction of a civilization and culture in Africa and in the Caribbean. It was about lust. It was about greed, the huge greed that people had, not just white people, but also some Africans who were selling their own people for money. The evidence that was given to Parliament about the reality of the slave ships, the brutality, the violence, the death, the sexual predatory nature towards African women, all of that makes a profound impact on the British people. It becomes clear that there's a huge amount of money to be made from the slave trade. The question then arises, how can you justify making money at such a kind of human cost? How can you justify the fact that the British want their sugar, grown by slaves, to sweeten their tea? How can you justify that in terms of the violence that's done to Africans? And not just to a few Africans. We're talking about the largest movement of people and forced movement of people until the Second World War. This is a huge, huge operation, and it becomes clear that it's based on violence and brutality of an extraordinary scale. Perhaps the most vivid instance of abuses associated with the slave trade was the atrocities that took place aboard the slave ship Song, where 132 slaves were cast overboard when there was a water shortage, thinking that rather than lose the slaves to death and perhaps incur some type of financial loss, if they were tossed overboard, then an insurance claim could be advanced for a property loss. This was an outrageous, horrific thing. I mean, it staggers the imagination that anyone could have ever allowed something so horrific to take place. When the case was brought to trial, because there were people who were outraged and wanted to see justice done, the presiding judge in the case said it was as if horses had been thrown overboard. And I don't think anything can drive home the sense of inhumanity, the coarseness of the culture of that day, than that kind of decision. Even when the slaves arrived at their destination, their sufferings were by no means over. Having spent three months of semi-starvation, they were kept on the ship a few more days to be fattened up by force-feeding before being driven naked through the streets to the auction block. Those that were still too sick or too weak were unloaded, dumped in the dock, and left there to die. A century and a half ago, Abraham Lincoln claimed that every schoolboy in America was familiar with the man and his story. Today, on both sides of the Atlantic, even his name is largely forgotten. And yet, the story of William Wilberforce contains a paradigm of how a person's character, the integration of faith, knowledge, principle, friendship, passion, and action, can become a force to change the world for the better. Summarizing Wilberforce's legacy is always difficult because it's so multifaceted. It extends far beyond the abolition of the slave trade and slavery. Wilberforce in many ways, his work anticipates the work of people like Martin Luther King Jr., people of faith seeking social justice. The other notion is that wherever you are, in whatever walk of life you are, you have a purpose. You have a role to play. I think of what Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, Wilberforce shows us that everyone can make a difference. Few of us will be in Parliament as Wilberforce was, but all of us are part of community. All of us can find ways to serve others and bring about the good society. Wilberforce is remembered as the man at the heart of abolition and has been memorialized any number of ways, whether it's in the formation of a university or in statues all over Britain. He was at the center of it all, but it's also because the way the history of abolition evolved. And is it possible, is it feasible to imagine that without Wilberforce the slave trade would have ended as and when it did? Well, the answer to that is now. He said right from the beginning that he wanted to see the end of slavery. I don't think he was a man who set out with a clear plan. He just did what he felt he must do and he realized from the start that nothing would happen unless Parliament passed an act. But you must remember, at the same time, he was very, very conscious of the need to transform what he would have called the manners of England, we would call the morals of England. Wilberforce welded together the ideals of justice for all, racial equality, concern for the poor in this country, welded all that together with a straightforward and simple faith. But in reality, he probably was ahead of his time because I think the environmentalists, certainly the abolitionists, those who voice various kinds of needs for freedom in certain areas, women in almost every category, he probably represents the model for all of it. Though he has not been ascribed such, we can still look at William Wilberforce not just as a symbol, but as a human being who made a contribution because we know where his heart was. William Wilberforce was born in Hull in 1759. His birthplace still stands. It looks like a prosperous merchant's house, exactly what it was. For over a century, his family had been very successful, made wealthy by the Baltic trade. His grandfather had two terms as the city's mayor. With his wealth, charm, and social position, young William could have enjoyed an easy life of privilege. True, he was small, little over five feet, delicate and nearsighted. But Wilberforce had great ambition and the gifts of intellect and personal magnetism that overcame his physical limitations. He stood for Parliament, and in 1780, within days of his 21st birthday, he became the Member of Parliament for Hull. Three years later, he was elected to the more prestigious constituency, the County of Yorkshire. By this time, he had already gained what was to become the most important friendship of his life, that of William Pitt. Pitt, who was just three months older than Wilberforce, was a phenomenon. He was to become Prime Minister at the age of 24, by far the youngest Premier in British history. He was also considered to have the finest intellect of his generation. He was a classical scholar, a brilliant mathematician, and an orator of awesome skill. Unfortunately, he did not get on quite as well with people. He once confessed to Wilberforce that he thought himself to be the shyest man alive. His shyness often made him seem cold, even arrogant. Many people found it far easier to admire Pitt than to have any real affection for him. Wilberforce, however, loved Pitt and considered him the wittiest man alive. Wilberforce and Pitt met as undergraduates at Cambridge. Pitt was a far more serious student than Wilberforce. We might refer to Wilberforce as something of a party boy today. He would stay up until 4 and 5 and 6 a.m. They were famous for singing to the wee hours of the morning. That was the world that he thrived in, and that's the world that he entered when he entered Cambridge. He was known for being insouciant. Insouciant was the best adjective you could have as a student in those days. He did study a little. He had a natural interest in poetry and the classics, but for the most part he would host people in his room. There was always a Yorkshire pie when it was set in his rooms. He knew how to entertain. So they were not drawn together by virtue of their studies, but it was when they came to the end of their time at Cambridge that Pitt and Wilberforce both, especially Pitt who had been groomed for politics since boyhood, began to think about politics. Wilberforce by this time had become friendly with Pitt. They had a circle of young friends, most of whom were going to enter politics if they could. And Wilberforce, this merchant's son who had made his way in polite and affluent society, thought, I'd like to go on with these friends. I'd like to continue with them in Parliament. And so Wilberforce and Pitt began to attend debates in the House of Commons. All the great speakers were there. And they began to desire a place in their company. When he did decide to enter into the larger fray, he began to show how utterly devastating he could be as a debater. William Pitt knew that his greatest ally in the House of Commons was his friend, William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was the ultimate weapon. He was as witty, as sarcastic, as brilliant an orator as anyone had ever seen. When he decided to go against someone, they were frightened that he would really embarrass them. There was no one who was really his equal in terms of parliamentary debate. We make a great mistake if we think that Wilberforce was free of faults. He himself knew that he had a quick temper. His family members, he said, were often grieved by flashes of his quick temper. One gets the impression that he got used to the wealth. He got used to being deferred to. He got used to sort of having his way with less gifted politicians in the House of Commons. He didn't suffer fools gladly, I guess would be the way to put it, prior to his great change. If William Wilberforce had simply pursued an ordinary parliamentary career, he would no doubt have been a well-regarded historical figure. But his life and career took an extremely serious turn. When Wilberforce was 25, his friends began to notice a gradual change in his character and indeed on his whole outlook on life. The change seems to have started with a renewed friendship with Isaac Milner, his old schoolmaster. He and Milner went together on a tour through France and Italy in 1785, during which the seeds were sown in Wilberforce for a personal and a wholehearted embrace of Christianity. What happened on the journey was not something Wilberforce or even Milner could have ever anticipated. Isaac Milner was one of the most brilliant minds of his day. He occupied the location chair at Cambridge and he was really someone that Wilberforce thought would make a great conversationalist for this long trip. But Wilberforce noticed that when the subject of religion came up, Milner was strangely serious. It was the only subject on which Milner seemed to be serious. Wilberforce of course subscribed to the fashionable, Unitarian, Enlightenment, rationalist views of his day and didn't take traditional Christianity very seriously at all. So he mocked Milner's thinking and at one point Milner said something to him along the lines of, you know, Wilberforce, I'm no match for you in this running fire, as he called it. But if you actually want to have a conversation on this, let me know and I would be glad to do it. At some point on their journey, Wilberforce noticed a book by a man named Philip Doddridge. The book was called The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. He asked Milner, what do you think of that book? Milner said, it's one of the best books ever written, why don't we take it with us and discuss it? So they did. What follows changed Wilberforce's life and all of history. By the time Wilberforce returned to England in the autumn of 1785, he was in a full-blown spiritual crisis. And he began to think, who can I seek out who could be a mentor for me, who could help me sort through these things beyond Milner, who had to return to Cambridge? And the only person he could think of was John Newton, this man whom he'd known as a boy, whom he'd not seen in about 15 years. John Newton was the son of an officer in the Merchant Navy. In his youth, he had sailed on a ship to West Africa, where he had hoped to be overseer of a slave depot off the coast. But he soon found himself shanghaied as one of the slaves. Well, Newton rarely reached the lowest point ever. He fell ill when he was on an island in Sierra Leone, and he nearly died there and was very badly treated. That's the point that I think he begins to call himself a wretch, and I'm sure that's where Amazing Grace That Saved a Wretch Like Me comes. He was not what you'd call a choir boy. He had become a slave trader. We would think of him today as someone guilty of crimes against humanity. When he had been rescued several times from trouble and elements of desertion, his father had interceded for him. He had to crawl out to eat raw roots at night. The slaves in chains saved up scraps of food that they could scarcely spare for him. So he refers to himself on his epitaph, which he wrote, servant of slaves in Africa. Someone who had himself been a slave, been a slave trader, was rescued from that whole setting and brought back to England. And within a matter of time, he was actually given command of a ship. He became a slave ship captain. It was certainly much better than what had gone before in terms of his personal fate. But he still hadn't shaken himself free of this great evil, this national institution called slavery. He went on several slave trading missions. Finally, for reasons of health, this imprisonment, this enslavement he'd had broke his health and he had to leave the sea. And it was then that he'd been going through a very gradual spiritual transformation that culminated ultimately in the most unlikely scenario. This former slave trader became a parson, became a rector, became a clergyman. He also became a hymn writer. After Newton fully embraced Christianity, he published his story. The book entitled An Authentic Narrative became a bestseller in Britain and America. In 1764, Newton was ordained a priest in the Church of England. He was made the rector at Sts. Peter and Paul in Olney, and later at St. Mary's in Wilma. Wilberforce thought if there's one person I might dare to speak with about my troubles, it would be John Newton. He sent a letter to Newton asking, can I meet with you, but you must tell no one, tell no one that I'm coming. And then the secret meeting was arranged for Wednesday, 6th of December, in Newton's home in Charles Square. And Wilberforce got there, and he just could not pluck up the courage to knock on Newton's door. And he walked around the square at least a couple of times before he could bring himself to do it. Wilberforce said after that interview, when I came away, my mind was in a calm and tranquil state. And what is more, Newton gave Wilberforce incredibly unconventional advice. Most evangelical Christians saw the world as a worldly, dirty place to be shunned, a place filled with sin. Newton thought and said to Wilberforce, stay in Parliament, keep up your friendship with Pitt. It may be that for such a time as this, invoking the Old Testament language of Esther, God may have a purpose for you in politics. Well Newton not only proved wise, he proved prophetic. And what a moment for Newton also. He was overwhelmed to see history in the making, because he could see what could happen through this young man. There's Newton standing beside Wilberforce saying, join your life up. You know, you have a crisis, of course you have a crisis. But it's a crisis of disintegration, not of integration. What God wants for him is his wholeness and his healing. And bringing together and joining together things that in his own life, his own life before he became a Christian, were pretty much torn apart. There is not a part of his life that is not outside the influence and the sphere of God. And when he came to that point, when he was settled at that point, the whole of his life came together. Wilberforce knew that he had to discover God's purpose for his life. And the change that matters, I think, in his life, as in everybody's life, is the point where you begin to ask, what's the purpose, what's the calling? And that doesn't mean that a voice from the sky will tell you the answer, or that you can open the Bible and just read it off straight away. It means that you begin to say, what is it that only I can do? And of course, Wilberforce, very interestingly, very movingly, is involved in discerning just that question. Is there something that I can do with my gifts, my influence, my wealth, my connections, something I can do? Well, yes, there is. I have leverage that other people don't in this particular task. And it may be that I've been given all these things so that I use them for this. Wilberforce was very worried about how his conversion would affect his friendship with Pitt. Pitt assured Wilberforce that nothing could affect their friendship. Pitt was more worried that Wilberforce might retire from politics. In point of fact, Wilberforce was thinking about seeking ordination as a clergyman. Newton's advice and Pitt's wishes won the day. Wilberforce wrote, My walk is a public one, my business is in the world, and I must mix in the assemblies of men or quit the post which Providence seems to have assigned me. On Sunday, October 27, 1787, Wilberforce finally made up his mind. After church services and another long conversation with Newton, he wrote the four simple lines that have become one of the greatest personal mission statements of all time. God Almighty has placed before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners. Those two objectives were to drive William Wilberforce, guiding him, fueling him, and focusing all his energies for the rest of his days. It became clear he was going to have a long and tedious and taxing fight on his hands. It took 20 years. And Wilberforce suffered perhaps the greatest setbacks, the greatest personal crises he'd ever known during that 20-year fight. If one thinks of the 1790s as perhaps the most dire and taxing period of Wilberforce's life, that picture is helpful. Even William Wilberforce might have given up in despair had it not been for the support and the affection of his friends. And above all, that special group of friends known as the Clapham Circle. In Clapham, there is a magnificent building called Holy Trinity Church. Built in 1776, it was really the spiritual center for the Clapham Circle and its pastor John Venn was in many respects, for the Clapham Circle, what Newton was for Wilberforce personally. And so you've got John Venn nurturing and caring for and about not just the Clapham sect, not just the 12 or so who were worshiping here. This church was full. This had 1,200 people, this church seats. And every Sunday, there was a notice out that said, church full. You know, you can't get any more people. You can't shoehorn anybody else into this building for its main act of worship. This is the place where the Clapham Circle found their sense of mission, where they began to understand how faith can have a good effect in the public square. If we think of Holy Trinity Clapham as sort of a spiritual center where they got the underpinnings, the sense of principles, the sense of faith in forming their labors in the public square, one cannot lay enough stress on how important Holy Trinity was. We had James Stephen who was a lawyer, Henry Thornton, a political economist, Hannah Moore, the gifted playwright and poet who lent her pen to the cause. Probably a group of about 10 people all told, but no prime minister ever had a more gifted set of colleagues, a more dedicated set of colleagues. And they were profoundly important to Wilberforce. They provided him with advice, with counsel. They helped him to recharge his batteries through the gift of fellowship. They were a very powerful network of friends and politicians and reformers. There's really been nothing like them. But it wasn't as though Wilberforce said, ah, I'm going to gather to myself this group of talented friends. It grew up very subtly over time. There was a small group of friends around him, Quakers, Evangelicals from the Church of England. And what they were really surprised about was just how widespread the feeling was. Once they began to campaign in the country, travel the country, talk to people, try to agitate locally, they found that there were huge numbers of people willing to join the campaign against the slave trade. They did this by attending lectures in huge numbers, but particularly by signing petitions. All join in to say that there's something wrong with the slave trade and it must be ended. I think when you look at William Wilberforce and most people who accomplish, it's never by yourself. Though you might be the point person. You might get the credit. But really what brings that about is, I think, basically three principles. One, giving people a vision of what can be. Establishing values on which those visions become reality. And then empowering other people. If William Wilberforce had not freed anybody else, then he would not be someone that we would be talking about here now. But his great gift was a gift for networking, a gift of connecting people, helping them to find common cause. And so when he and the Clapham Circle took something on board, the ripple effect throughout British society was really very effective. The struggle for full abolition of the slave trade took 20 years, and the fight for complete emancipation of all slaves took another 26 years. During that long fight, Wilberforce never lost sight of the second of his great objectives, the reformation of manners. The word manners, what did it mean? In the language of the 19th century, the word conveyed the moral fiber of the nation. Wilberforce is the person who shines like a star at a time when Britain was pretty dissolute, pretty shambolic in terms of its public morality, who said, hold on. Let's campaign for the big issues, but let's do that as Christians. But let's also make sure that that big public campaign is sustained by our own internal private life. That's the fuel, if you like, that fires the engine of campaigning. Wilberforce realized two essential facts, that to abolish the slave trade and eventually slavery, he had to win over the members of Parliament. But to reform the morals of the country, he had to win over the people who were most important in guiding the attitudes of the age, and whereas today it might be pop stars and football stars, in Wilberforce's day, it was the great nobles, the great landowners, and he set out to make goodness fashionable, and he succeeded. And when Wilberforce was referring to the reformation of manners, he was really talking about the work of cultural renewal. One must always remember that the time in which Wilberforce lived was a very coarse time in terms of a cultural barometer, dueling, adultery, gambling, the ravages of cheap gin. It was a time where inhumanity, incivility, dire social conditions were rife. So when Wilberforce began to talk about the work of moral reform, the work of cultural renewal, these were the kinds of things, these social ills that he was taking aim at. There's no question that Wilberforce's faith animated his battle to end the slave trade and to bring about the end of slavery itself. But what it also did was it gave him a view of humanity that was completely different than what had existed up to that point in cultures and societies and in politics. And this new view of humanity, which arose from his faith, said that anywhere you see suffering and injustice, you are obliged to deal with it. You're obliged to fight against it. Wilberforce was involved in the founding, leading, or financially supporting of over 60 organizations that worked for the betterment of society. The work of these organizations included addressing the abuses of child labor, education for the deaf, prison reform, the National Gallery of Art, smallpox inoculation, and schools for indigent children. It was his firm belief that these organizations would bring about what the poet William Cooper called the better hour for all in society. Wilberforce's personal generosity led him to commit his personal time and his fortune to provide a voice for people who had no voice. By the end of his life, his considerable fortune was gone because he did not only give from his excess but from his very substance. Many of the societies and charitable organizations formed by Wilberforce and his friends still exist today. Their continued existence is part of one of the greatest philanthropic legacies in the Western world. William Wilberforce had accepted his mission, and he was now fully armed for the struggle ahead. The first thing that he and his fellow abolitionists had to decide was what they must abolish. Remember that there were two distinct evils, the institution of slavery itself and the other, the slave trade. The abolitionists knew that they could not fight both battles at once. They knew, too, that ridding the world of the institution of slavery and granting freedom and status to all the enslaved would challenge the current notion of private property. Yet one simple act of parliament could abolish the slave trade. So the abolitionists decided to concentrate first on stopping the trade. The slave trade, when Wilberforce began to think about seeking its abolition, was an incredibly large part of the British economy. The analogy has been given that it was as much a part of the British economy, the economy of the empire, as the American defense industry is today. It was a significant part of their gross national product. It was firmly entrenched. Many members of parliament owed their family fortunes, their place in parliament to the wealth, the power, the prestige derived from the slave trade. So the notion of Wilberforce taking that on, it was an incredibly daunting task. Wilberforce's initial strategy was to secure abolition by international convention. He was worried that British traders would not agree to abolition if they thought other nations would simply gobble up their share of the market. His hopes for an international convention were dashed. So early in 1788, Wilberforce, with the help of the abolitionists, began preparing the case and gathering public support. The strain of preparing such a massive case led to exhaustion, fever, and a breakdown in Wilberforce's physical and mental health. Many thought he was dying. That little fellow, his doctors declared, has not the stamina to last a fortnight. It's recorded for us. That guy was given to kind of bouts of depression, and he got down about life. He got despondent and despairing. Did Wilberforce know at the beginning of his campaign for the abolition of the slave trade that it would take him 20 years? And, you know, I'm sure if he thought about that, he'd think, I have no influence. Yet in May, he stood up in the House of Commons and spoke for three and a half hours. The three greatest parliamentarians of the day, William Pitt, Edmund Burke, and Charles James Fox, all supported him. Yet, the West Indian planters had a powerful lobby of their own and insisted on postponing the vote until even more evidence had been heard. In April 1791, Wilberforce once again moved for abolition. He quoted one of the witnesses in the inquiry, a Captain Knox, who had testified that on the Middle Passage, the slaves slept during the night in very tolerable comfort. Knox admitted, however, that he had carried 290 of them in a vessel of only 120 tons, which meant that there was no room for all of them to have lain on their backs, much less sleep and tolerable comfort. In 1796, he had the votes lined up. Enough to carry the day. His opponents resorted to an insidious tactic, a tactic that with hindsight devastated Wilberforce. They gave enough free opera tickets to lure away enough of Wilberforce's lukewarm supporters to an opera. They decided going to the opera was more important than abolishing the slave trade. Wilberforce lost that vote in the House of Commons by four votes. And he suffers what appears to have been his second nervous breakdown. Mentally, he was distraught. Physically, his health broke. He considered throwing over politics. He had been in the fight for nine years trying to end the slave trade. He was devastated. Images of slaves in chains, in bondage, the horrors of the Middle Passage ran through his mind. He couldn't sleep. So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition. Again and again, Wilberforce brought the abolition bill before Parliament. Again and again, despite growing evidence of the horrors of the trade and the growing will of the people to abolish the trade, the bill was defeated. Wilberforce did not confine his campaign to Parliament. He worked with his circle of friends and with the abolitionists to change public opinion everywhere. The slave rebellions in the Caribbean caught the attention of the plantation owners. The speaking and writing of a former slave, Equiano, raised the consciousness of the nation to this great evil that had been until now largely invisible to the British people. Wilberforce and the abolitionists fostered public discussion on the horrors of slavery at all levels. They sponsored petition drives that demonstrated how the tide of public opinion was turning against slavery. They used a distinctly modern technique, one that is now a part of every political movement and campaign. The abolitionists commissioned Josiah Wedgwood, potter to the king, and a friend of Wilberforce to design a plaque that would provide the visual symbol for the abolition movement. It was a picture of a slave in shackles with the words, Am I not a man and a brother? So the brilliant thing about the abolition movement was it was one of the first, if you like, marketing movements of its time. It actually understood about branding itself. It understood about pulling in different groups of the coalition. They needed William Wilberforce and his influence in Parliament. They needed, they invited Thomas Clarkson to join them. These people all helped to feed information into William Wilberforce. And Wilberforce was through the fact that they went and gathered information about life on the plantations, about what was going on. That fuelled Wilberforce's power in Parliament and his ability to make Parliament move. Still, the motion for abolition was consistently rejected. Wilberforce refused to give up. Year after year, he proposed it in the House of Commons. And year after year, the bill was rejected. For the next 16 years. During that time, there were many threats on his life. On one visit to Yorkshire, a friend insisted on accompanying him as an armed bodyguard. Throughout the entire campaign, he suffered from almost constant ill health and considerable pain. But he never wavered in his determination. When you think of the number of times the legislation was proposed and rejected, and Wilberforce's enormous courage and persistence in this, I think that really puts in perspective the very shallow short-term goals that often characterise modern politics. Something's got to be done within this electoral cycle and if not, well, maybe we need to forget about it. Wilberforce is a much more complex figure than we might think. He was clearly a very devout man. He sticks by this campaign, the abolition of the slave trade, for 30 years, and then sticks to the campaign against slavery for many years afterwards. It was that sheer kind of dogged steadfastness, in a way, to ending the slave trade that characterises him above all else. The date was February 23, 1807. The House of Commons was again set to debate the slave trade abolition bill. This time, however, the sentiment was different. The great public relations campaign had produced results. There was no doubt, thanks to the efforts of the abolitionists and the dogged determination of Wilberforce, that the bill would pass. During the session, there was the most dramatic moment, when Attorney General Samuel Romanoff rose to his feet. He painted a vivid portrait of Napoleon and Wilberforce retiring for the evening that very day. Napoleon may be going to bed secure in his power, but his sleep would be tormented by the blood he had spilled, the lives he had destroyed. After the historic vote in Parliament, however, Wilberforce would return quietly to the bosom of his family, and would sleep in peace and in sheer joy, knowing that he had preserved the lives of millions of his fellow creatures. It was unlike any other in history. It was electric. Wilberforce went to the House of Commons, and as debate began on the bill abolishing the slave trade, members would jump to their feet in bunches and groups. They all wanted to speak on this great issue. It became apparent very early on that something very different was going to take place. Every member of Parliament who was there that day, about 300 of them, were sure that this was the day history would be made. They knew, they had a self-consciousness about being part of history. This House, conceiving the African slave trade to be contrary to the principles of justice, humanity, and sound policy, will, with all practicable expedition, proceed to take effectual measures for abolishing the said trade. And at that moment, the House thought that was a wonderful point, and they started to cheer, and Wilberforce, overcome with emotion, sat there with his head bowed and tears streaming down his face as he thought that this act, at long last, was going to become law. When the members of Parliament saw him weeping, they all stood. Everyone in the chamber stood and applauded and cheered. Three cheers for William Wilberforce. This was completely unprecedented. The cheers, the cheering, made Wilberforce weep the more. His weeping made them cheer the more. It was a glorious bedlam in the House of Commons. It was one of those moments that we can look at as a genuinely historic moment. It changed the course of the world. After the bill passed, almost overnight, the once vilified Wilberforce became a national hero. His old friend, Sir James Macintosh, framed the sentiments of the nation. We are apt perpetually to express our wonder that so much exertion should be necessary to suppress such flagrant injustice. The more just reflection will be that a short period of the short life of one man is, well and wisely directed, sufficient to remedy the miseries of millions for ages. It was the moment that he'd worked for, that he'd suffered for, that he and his friends had worked countless hours amidst such difficulty. It was a moment that was unlike any other. It has been described as one of the three or four perfectly virtuous moments in human history. And the vote was overwhelming, 283 to 16. There had been a sea change in British national life. Wilberforce had created a consensus that the slave trade was a great, tragic national sin and it had to be dealt with. The abolition of the slave trade was a tremendous achievement. But Wilberforce could not rest until the institution of slavery was eliminated throughout the empire and every slave was free. He again dedicated his life and his energy to the task. The Napoleonic Wars threw all Europe into confusion until 1815, stalling the emancipation efforts. Then, almost immediately after the war's end, Wilberforce suffered personal tragedies. Through all his personal tragedies, he continued to lead the fight for emancipation. In 1825, he realized that he could work no longer. He was at the time 66. His friend Pitt had died at 47 and he himself had for years been a sick man, consistently wearing himself out for the sake of the cause he believed in above all others. We have a tendency to think of Wilberforce, with hindsight, as someone who carried everything before him, this great crusader for social justice. I think we need to step back from that a bit and realize that he was a very human person. Not only did he have faults and failings against which he struggled, like his temper, but he also had to contend with these physical ailments. He was constantly subject to them, whether it was poor eyesight, he eventually lost his hearing as he grew older, he developed severe curvature of the spine. He was not a robust man. He was someone who suffered a great deal in pursuit of something larger than himself. After the slave trade was abolished in 1807, it took until 1833 for slavery itself to be ended in the British Empire. On his deathbed he received word that slavery would be ended. The thing that he had dreamt about his whole life would actually have happened and that he would have been there to hear of it, and then three days later to get his final reward. Wilberforce died, knowing the work that had consumed him and his fellow abolitionists for almost 50 years had been accomplished. On the day of his burial in Westminster Abbey, a friend wrote to one of Wilberforce's sons. Today, as I came down the Strand, every third person I met going about their ordinary business was in mourning. So, a week or two later, where the slaves in the West Indies, their freedom was assured. And I think the triumph of the abolition movement is that it did end. It did end. And that, I think, is ultimately about the triumph of good over evil. And that, for me, was the part of the story that raised my heart, because I felt that there is something in the human psyche that will make us always rise up against oppression, even when we are the oppressors. I do not think that abolition would have been achieved without people who believed in God. Because I think that the enslaved Africans needed God just for the faith and ability to survive each day. And so I think that the role of Christianity was an incredibly profound part of the abolition movement. You see it in the life of William Wilberforce. You see it in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. You see it in the life of Gandhi. They made decisions that this can be done in a nonviolent fashion. And if we do it that way, it is not about the bloodshed, but it is about having pricked the conscience of people to make them have to think about the reality that you are enslaving other human beings. And that is not a right that is given to you by God. William Wilberforce put everything he was and everything he had on the line for his two great objects. He leveraged his social position. He leveraged his political capital. He leveraged his friendships and relationships, his strength and energy, and his personal fortune, literally all he had, to see the slaves set free and to see England arrive at her better hour. The British historian Trevelyan describes the moment a year after the vote in 1834. When slavery would be ended in the British Empire. And he describes this image of the West Indian Negroes on a hill waiting for the sunrise, knowing that the moment the sun rose, the moment that day dawned, they would be free. It's just an extraordinary image and shows us that real human beings were involved in this, human beings who hoped for freedom, who awaited the sunrise to celebrate something that they thought could never possibly happen in their lifetimes. After the abolition of the slave trade, it was said that Wilberforce was the conscience of the nation, although it was something without precedent. It became something that ennobled the British nation, called them, to use Lincoln's phrase, to remember the better angels of their nature. Wilberforce's power, the power of his personality, the power of his principles, helped change British life and one cannot lay enough stress upon that. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, it was the faithful, persistent, and enduring enthusiasm of William Wilberforce and his noble co-workers that finally thawed the British heart into sympathy for the slave, and moved the strong arm of that government in mercy to put an end to his bondage. Let no American, especially no colored American, be without a generous recognition of this stupendous achievement, what though it was not American but British, it was a triumph of right over wrong, of good over evil, and a victory for the whole human race. Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmony of liberty. Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies, facing the rising sun of our new day begun. Let us march on, till victory is won.