William Wilberforce Biography

William Wilberforce was born in Kingston-upon-Hull, England in 1759 to a wealthy Methodist family. At 17, he went to St. John College in Cambridge. It was there he became good friends with William Pitt, who later would become Britain's youngest prime minister. At the age of 20, William left university for a career in politics. At 24 he was elected to Parliament for the county seat of Yorkshire. In 1759, he coverted to Evangelical Christianity and became interested in social reform. It was then that he was approached by Lady Millington to help bring an end to the slave trade.

Petitions to end the slave trade had been introduced twice before, once in 1783 and again in 1787, but were unsucessful. In 1791, Wilberforce presented his first bill to abolish the slave trade and it too was defeated. He did so again in 1792, and it was suggested there be an amendment to his Abolition Bill that used the word "gradual"-making gradual abolition the law. This still was still to mean - no total abolition. Wilberforce had introduced his Abolition Bill almost every year in the 1790's, then again in 1804 and 1805, but still no luck.

Finally, in 1807 with the support of the new Whig Administration, Parliament voted in favor of abolition and the Abolition Act finally became a law making slave trading on British ships illegal. However, slavery still existed in the British colonies. In 1812, Wilberforce started work on a Slavery Registration Bill. The bill stated that if slaves were registered than it could prove whether they had been recently transported from Africa.

In 1825, Wilberforce resigned from the House of Commons but continued to speak about ending slavery in the British colonies. IN 1833 Parliament finally passed the Slavery Abolition Act. This act gave all slaves in the British empire their freedom. Three days after the act was passed, Wilberforce died.

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