William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce, who lived from 24 August 1759 to 29 July 1833, was a British politician and philanthropist who led the movement to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. Born in Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he entered politics in 1780 and served as an independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire from 1784 to 1812, undergoing an evangelical conversion in 1785 that reshaped his life and gave him a lasting commitment to reform. In 1787 he came into contact with Thomas Clarkson and a circle of antislavery activists, including Granville Sharp, Hannah More and Charles Middleton, who persuaded him to take up the cause of abolition, and he led the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade for twenty years until the Slave Trade Act passed in 1807. Convinced of the importance of religion, morality and education, Wilberforce also championed the Society for the Suppression of Vice, British missionary work in India, the free colony at Sierra Leone, the Church Mission Society and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, even as his underlying conservatism drew criticism that he ignored injustice at home while campaigning against slavery abroad. He continued to support full abolition after resigning from Parliament in 1826 for reasons of health, and he died three days after learning that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which ended slavery across most of the British Empire, was assured of passage; he was buried in Westminster Abbey.