William Wilberforce was a member of the House of Commons and the son of the wealthy merchant Robert Wilberforce. His grandfather, William, had amassed a great fortune through trade in the Baltic Sea and was elected mayor of Hull twice. Little William had been frail and sickly from the day he was born, but that had done nothing to curb his love of pleasure.
He met William Pitt the Younger while studying at Cambridge. The two often played cards, gambled, drank late into the night, skipped classes, and barely passed their exams without earning honors degrees. Still, he did not attend certain parties that he found unpleasant.
After graduating, William Wilberforce returned to his hometown. Relying on his family's wealth and connections, he defeated his rivals and entered the House of Commons, becoming the youngest member in British history. With his outstanding talent and his friend Pitt already serving as prime minister, Wilberforce could be called the darling of the political world. But a trip through Europe changed him.
At first, he had dismissed the Gospel, but later he met the elderly pastor John Bull, the man who had written "Amazing Grace." He told Wilberforce about his early years as a slave trader and how, after his mother's death, he had abandoned the slave trade. That conversation set Wilberforce on the path of abolition.
Where there was an alliance against the slave trade, there was also an alliance of slave traders. In the same year the French Revolution broke out, when Wilberforce and the members of the anti-slave-trade alliance first proposed an abolition bill, everyone treated him as a "Don Quixote." The motion was easily voted down, and every member of Parliament brushed off their sleeves and left. Only he and the other members remained in the empty chamber.
But