He spent 20 years losing before he won

William Wilberforce was elected to Parliament at 21. He was wealthy, charming, well-connected, and at that point not particularly interested in the welfare of enslaved people. His conversion to serious Christian faith in 1785 changed the trajectory of his life in ways he did not immediately understand.

He considered leaving politics for ministry. John Newton, the former slave trader who had written Amazing Grace, advised him otherwise. Newton told Wilberforce that God had raised him up for the good of the church and for the good of the nation, and that his place was Parliament. Wilberforce stayed.

He began his parliamentary campaign against the slave trade in 1787. He gathered evidence, built alliances, endured personal attacks, and introduced bill after bill. The opposition was not merely commercial. It was systemic. The slave trade was the economic foundation of the British Empire's Atlantic operations. The people who profited from it were powerful and organised.

The Slave Trade Act passed in 1807 after 20 years of effort. It banned British ships from participating in the slave trade but did not free the people already enslaved in British colonies. Wilberforce spent the remaining 26 years of his life working toward full emancipation. He retired from Parliament in 1825 but continued to write, advocate, and fundraise.

The Slavery Abolition Act, which finally granted freedom to enslaved people across most of the British Empire, received royal assent on July 26, 1833. Wilberforce died three days later, on July 29. Whether he knew the bill had passed is not entirely certain. Whether it mattered to him by then is also not entirely clear. He had spent his adult life on this. The outcome was not the point. The faithfulness was.