Portrait of Wilberforce courtesy of Kevin Belmonte, lead historical consultant for "Amazing Grace"

William Wilberforce was born in 1759 into a prosperous merchant family in the North Sea port city of Hull, in England. His father, Robert Wilberforce, died when William was eight years old, and his mother, Elizabeth, sent him to live with an aunt and uncle in London. His aunt, Hannah, had become a devotée of George Whitefield, an Anglican minister who, along with the brothers John and Charles Wesley, is regarded as one of the founders of Methodism.

The Methodist Moment
The Methodists had begun as a group of divinity students at Oxford University during the late 1720s who were dismayed by what they perceived as a state of apathy and dryness in the mainstream Anglican Church. It was the 18th century, the Age of Reason, and leading Anglican theologians such as John Locke had sought to make Christianity as "reasonable" as possible, turning it into a mere ethical system that de-emphasized Jesus' divinity and the doctrine of salvation.

Meanwhile, large numbers of English Christians, especially among the working classes, had drifted away from religion altogether. The Methodists sought to change that, by advocating a Christianity that emphasized powerful preaching, close study of the Bible, a liturgy centered around communal hymn-singing, the mercy and love of God, and the fostering of an intimate, emotional relationship between individual believers and their Savior.

Methodism proved to be a powerful force in both British and American Christianity during the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century (Methodist preachers began emigrating to America as early as the 1760s). It led not only to the founding of independent Methodist churches but to the powerful revivalist movements known as the First and Second Great Awakenings. Methodism also strongly influenced the branch of Anglicanism that became known as "evangelical."

Works of charity and social reform were important components of the Methodist movement. One of the earliest Methodist causes was the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. In 1774, John Wesley, who had spent a stint pastoring a church in Savannah, Georgia, published an influential tract arguing that the brutal conditions to which slaves were subjected were incompatible with Christianity.

John Newton & the Birth of 'Amazing Grace'
During the two years he spent with his aunt and uncle during the 1760s, William Wilberforce was exposed to much Methodist preaching. One frequent visitor to his relatives' home was John Newton, a former seaman and captain of a slave-ship who had experienced a conversion from wild youth to evangelical Christian. Newton's newfound faith did not immediately lead him to abandon the slave trade (it was only later in life, under Wilberforce's influence, that he repented of his involvement with slavery and became an outspoken abolitionist), but he did eventually give up the sea to become an ordained Anglican priest in 1764.

Serving in parish churches in the town of Olney and, later, in London, Newton became famous for his eloquent preaching and his devotion to the poor. Working in collaboration with the poet William Cowper, another fervent evangelical, Newton composed a series of hymns. The most famous was "Amazing Grace," whose lyrics chronicled Newton's own transformation from wretched sinner to believer by the grace of God.

Young Wilberforce's Faith & Politics
Most upper-class Anglicans looked down upon evangelicals as overly emotional "enthusiasts," and Wilberforce's mother was among them. She and his grandfather took the boy back to Hull, where his newfound Christian fervor quickly withered. In 1776 William Wilberforce enrolled in St. John's College at Cambridge University, where he studied as little as possible, immersed himself in the college social scene, and began a lifelong friendship with William Pitt the Younger, the future prime minister.

In 1780, at the age of 21 and while still a student at Cambridge, Wilberforce was elected member of Parliament for Hull. As a Tory, he aligned himself with Pitt, who became prime minister in 1783. Wilberforce quickly gained a reputation for eloquence and integrity, and he was reelected to Parliament in 1784 as member for York, a large and populous northern city.
In 1785, Wilberforce began reading evangelical treatises, and he experienced his own Christian conversion. He called it "the Great Change." He reconnected with Newton, who was a prominent London preacher by then, and Newton helped him find his way back to faith. Wilberforce briefly considered abandoning Parliament in order to enter the Anglican clergy, but Newton, Pitt, and other friends persuaded him that he could serve God more effectively in public life.

Wilberforce Becomes an Abolitionist
Thus began a lifelong career devoted to social justice and what Wilberforce called "the reformation of manners"--an attack on vices such as drinking and gambling that afflicted and demoralized the poor. In 1787, he was introduced to Thomas Clarkson, another evangelical Anglican whose religious convictions had made him a lifelong antislavery activist. Clarkson introduced Wilberforce to the appalling conditions--the packed, filthy, fetid holds, the heavy chains--under which slaves were transported from Africa to the West Indies.

Clarkson's cause became Wilberforce's. He became the leader of a group called "the saints"--Anglicans, Quakers, dissenters and others devoted to the abolitionist cause. In 1789, Wilberforce made his first speech against the slave trade in Parliament. In 1791, he introduced a bill to abolish the trade altogether.

Wilberforce's battle was not an easy one. Powerful interests in the slave trade itself and in port cities such as Liverpool that had grown prosperous on the income the trade generated ensured the failure of his bill. Wilberforce did not give up. During every successive session of Parliament he introduced his bill, and it was defeated every time--although there were minor victories over the years, such as limits on the number of slaves who could be crowded into the ships' holds.

Sucess in the Long Battle
Britain's war with France in the aftermath of the French Revolution put Wilberforce's anti-slavery project on hold for more than a decade. During this time, he and Clarkson waged a long public-relations campaign to educate the public to the horrors of slavery and also built coalitions with abolitionists in the Whig party that came to power when Pitt died in 1806.

Finally, in 1807, the tide of public opinion had turned, and both houses of Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act by large margins, ending nearly four hundred years of slaving in the British Empire. America followed suit with its own law banning the slave trade in 1808.

Slavery itself remained a reality, of course, and Wilberforce continued to battle for complete abolition of the institution. He also devoted himself to other causes such as missionary work and helping to found the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, as well as to private works of charity.

Declining health obliged him to retire from Parliament in 1825. In 1833, he suffered a severe bout of influenza from which he never recovered. He lived long enough, however, to see the abolition bill that he had championed approach the very final stages in becoming law.

A month after his death on July 29, 1833, Parliament finally passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which provided that every slave in the British Empire was to be set free within four years. The battle was won.