Today is the Birthday of the Man Who Abolished the Slave Trade – HillFaith Story

Today is the birthday of William Wilberforce.  Abraham Lincoln once said Wilberforce’s name is one that every schoolboy should know.  Yet I suspect it is a name that many of you will not recognize.Wilberforce was a member of the British Parliament for nearly three decades in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s.  Over his long career in Parliament he enjoyed many accomplishments.William Wilburforce encounters the brutal reality of the slave ships (Screenshot from “Amazing Grace” trailer on YouTube).However, he is best remembered as the person most responsible for the slave trade being outlawed in the British Empire, which proved to be the beginning of the end of legalized slavery throughout the world.Wilberforce was an unlikely political hero.  He was born to a wealthy merchant family and gained admission to St. John’s College at Cambridge through his family connections.  While he was brilliant, he was more of a bon vivant than a serious student throughout his college career.  After school, he was elected as one of the youngest members of Parliament.However, in his mid-20’s Wilberforce experienced a religious conversion.  After that, he devoted himself to a series of humanitarian causes, with abolition being his principal passion.He also founded what we now know as the SPCA, the Bible Society, was an early advocate of women’s suffrage and a patron of dozens of other charities and causes on which he spent almost his entire inherited fortune.

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Source: Today is the Birthday of the Man Who Abolished the Slave Trade – HillFaith Story