Wilberforce, William

Wilberforce, William (1759-1833), statesman, b. Hull, Yorkshire, England.

William Wilberforce became a Member of Parliament at the age of twenty-one, and grew interested in the slave trade.

At this time there were no slaves in England, but there had been when Wilberforce was a boy. For three hundred years, slave traders had been kidnapping black people in Africa and taking them for sale as slaves in distant places, especially the West Indies and America.

Wilberforce found that over 100,000 slaves were still being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean every year and more than half of them were carried in British ships. In 1792, he asked Parliament to pass a law against the slave trade, but he could not get them to agree.

Wilberforce went on speaking and working against the slave trade and in 1807 Parliament did at last pass the Slave Trade Act. This made it unlawful for any British person to take part in the slave trade.

After that Wilberforce wanted a law to set slaves free in lands ruled by Britain. He became ill and had to stop being an MP in 1825, but the law he wanted was passed in 1833, just three days before he died.

He is buried in Westminster Abbey. His house still stands as a museum in Hull.

See Eric Metaxas Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery