William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce lived from 1759 to 1833 and was a British politician, philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. Born in Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780 and became an independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire from 1784 to 1812, undergoing a religious conversion in 1785 that gave him a lifelong concern for reform. In 1787 he came into contact with Thomas Clarkson and other abolitionist activists, who persuaded him to take on the cause, and he headed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade for 20 years until passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807. In later years he supported the campaign for complete abolition of slavery, continuing his involvement after resigning from Parliament in 1826 due to failing health; that campaign led to the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which abolished slavery in most of the British Empire, and Wilberforce died three days after learning the acts passage through Parliament was assured.