WILBERFORCE was born into a wealthy merchant family in Hull and received a B.A. and M.A. at St. John’s College at Cambridge, where he became close friends with William Pitt the Younger. He was elected as MP for Hull as an independent at the age of twenty-one. He converted to evangelical Christianity in 1785 and briefly contemplated renouncing politics for the church, but instead refocused his political efforts on social reform. Wilberforce allied with leading abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson, Charles Middleton, and Hannah More. He presented his first speech opposing the slave trade on 12 May 1789, and continued to press for the abolition of the slave trade until the bill’s final passage on 23 February 1807. His other political efforts focused on education, prison and capital punishment reform, improvements in working conditions, and moral reform. Wilberforce retired from Parliament due to poor health in 1825 and died on 29 July 1833, three days after learning that Parliament would fully abolish slavery.

 

In July 1806, the Edinburgh Review published an open letter addressed to Wilberforce from Robert Heron “on the Justice and Expediency of Slavery and the Slave Trade, and on the best Means to improve the Manners and Condition of the Negroes in the West Indies.” After Wilberforce’s death, the Review advertised the 1838 biography of Wilberforce by his sons.

 B.W.