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Volume 4 Number 067 William Wilberforce and the Abolition of Slavery - III

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Volume 4 Number 067 William Wilberforce and the Abolition of Slavery - III Volume 4 Number 067 William Wilberforce and the Abolition of Slavery - III Lead: After years of trying, William Wilberforce and his associates convinced the English Parliament to abolish slavery. Wilberforce said he was motivated by religion. Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts. Content: After a lackluster student career at Cambridge, wealthy, well-connected, 22- year old William Wilberforce was elected to Parliament in 1780. He was an ally of future Prime Minister William Pitt, but he would later acknowledge that his life was typical of most young English gentlemen at the time: affluent, sensual, clever, frivolous, basically adrift with little purpose. That began to change in 1784, when on a trip to the French Riviera he experienced a re-awakening of faith. This eventually led to his association with a group of reformers who lived in the village of Clapha m, south of London. They were mostly wealthy members of the English upper-class unified by their devotion to evangelical Anglicanism. Among this group, led by Wilberforce, were merchant banker Henry Thornton, in whose parlor the group often met, attorney Granville Sharp, John Venn, rector of the parish church in Clapham, and educator and author Hannah More. They met for prayer, they met to study the Bible, and they met to plot the political reform of English society, most especially the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. Through the canny use of media outlets, newspapers, lectures, petitions, and direct Parliamentary maneuvering, this group helped change the subject of civil discourse and focus attention on those parts of British society in need of reform. Success breeds critics and the Clapham Sect, as it was later known, was not faultless. They were elitists who often looked down upon the victims they sought to help. They feared radical change and supported repressive, sometimes violent measures to slow the progress to wider democracy. They seemed to be more concerned with moral reform among the poor rather than the rich. One wag said that Wilberforce’s Society for the Suppression of Vice should rather be named, “The Society for the Suppression of Vice Among Those with Less Than £500 a Year.” However, in the end their success outweighed their deficiencies. Next time: the end of slavery. At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts. Resources Anstey, Roger. The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition. Macmillan, 1975. Coupland, Sir Reginald. Wilberforce. Collins, 1945. Lean, Garth. God’s Politician. Helmers and Howard, 1987. C o p y r i g h t by Dan Roberts Enterprises, Inc. .
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