The day the chains were challenged

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, May 12th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. More than two hundred years ago, the British Empire’s economy ran on slavery. In the 1730s alone, England trafficked 170,000 Africans. Abolition seemed impossible.

EICHER: But as the years went by, abolitionists revealed the horrors of the slave-trade, and a faithful politician took up the cause. WORLD’s Emma Eicher brings us the story.

EMMA EICHER: On the morning of May 12th, 1789, the British Palace of Westminster is packed with people. They’re all craning their necks to see the man who will introduce a very controversial bill: he’s the Yorkshire Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce.

He rises from the wooden bench to address the crowd. He looks smart, wearing breeches, a heavily embroidered silk waistcoat, and a cloth coat with a high collar—traditional Parliament garb. And at thirty years old, he’s short, standing at only five foot three.

But when Wilberforce opens his mouth to speak, a powerful voice fills the room.

Voice actor Jon Gauger reads from his speech.

JON GAUGER: I march forward with a firmer step in the full assurance that my cause will bear me out, and that I shall be able to justify upon the clearest principles, every resolution in my hand, the avowed end of which is, the total abolition of the slave trade.

Reporters are squashed in the public gallery above the benches, quickly taking longhand notes. Below them, more than 300 Members of Parliament are listening, and opponents get ready to interject.

It’s called cut-and-thrust: anyone can interrupt a speech if they object to something. And they do. Sometimes the House of Commons is so loud it’s hard to hear who’s winning the debate.

But this is the beginning of a long address. Over the next four hours, Wilberforce introduces the bill that would abolish slavery in Britain.

For the past few years, he’s raised the issue of abolition many times—all with the same disappointing result. There’s too much money and power at stake to bring about radical reformation. But Wilberforce has made impressive friends, and is a strong speaker. Now, he wields his formidable political influence to make the British MPs listen to him.

And on this particular Tuesday, Wilberforce’s address becomes the most important of his life.

GAUGER: We are all guilty—we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others.

Wilberforce’s fiery conviction against slavery began four years earlier, during what he called his “Great Change.” He became a Christian, and it transformed him. He gave up gambling and drinking, and started writing books in defense of the faith. He wrote this in his book, Inadequate Conceptions of the Importance of Christianity:

GAUGER: Is it not the great end of religion, and, in particular, the glory of Christianity; to curb the violence, to control the appetites, and to smooth the asperities of man; to make us compassionate and kind, and forgiving one to another; to make us good husbands, good fathers, good friends; and to render us active and useful in the discharge of the relative social and civil duties?

Shortly after his conversion, Wilberforce joins abolitionist Thomas Clarkson’s investigation into the slave trade. As he learns more, he’s horrified at the evidence and convinced that England must be reminded of Biblical morality.

GAUGER: So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the trade’s wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition.

Wilberforce resolves to act:

GAUGER: Let the consequences be what they would; I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.”

For decades, the British slave-trade has been lurking out of sight and out of mind. Most of the public doesn’t know the depths of its evils.

Wilberforce sets out to expose them. He tours slave ships and interviews cruel slave captains alongside Clarkson—and they publish their findings in pamphlets to distribute.

Now, in Parliament, his voice rings out, describing the horrors of slave ships sailing from the West Indies:

GAUGER: So much misery condensed in so little room, is more than the human imagination had ever before conceived. Let anyone imagine to himself 6 or 700 of these wretches chained two and two, surrounded with every object that is nauseous and disgusting, diseased, and struggling under every kind of wretchedness! How can we bear to think of such a scene as this?

And Wilberforce leaves these final words resounding in everyone’s ears:

GAUGER: Sympathy is the great source of humanity.

Applause is forbidden in the House, so Wilberforce sits down to silence. But reporters hurry off to publish glowing reviews of his speech the next day. Many consider it the best ever given by an MP. One reporter writes that “Liverpool merchants hung their heads in sorrow; for the African occupation of bolts and chains is no more.”

But Wilberforce’s triumph is short-lived. Parliament considers the bill, requesting more evidence, stalling for time. After all, the government itself has a vested interest in the slave trade. Britain’s very economy depends on it.

Wilberforce presses on. He returns to the floor with more evidence, but still nothing happens. He reintroduces the abolition bill almost every year from 1790 to 1800. Though public enthusiasm for the cause ebbs and flows, Wilberforce never wavers.

Finally, in 1807, after 18 long years, the House of Commons overwhelmingly passes a bill to abolish the slave trade for good. It only goes so far as to stop the sale of slaves in British ports, and slaves already in Britain won’t be freed.

But it’s still a step forward. When the final vote is tallied, Wilberforce buries his head in his hands, tears streaming. And despite convention, explosive applause breaks out as his colleagues give three cheers for his hard won victory. He remarks to a friend:

GAUGER: I was myself so completely overpowered by my feelings that I was insensible to all that was passing around me.

And the fight isn’t over yet.

Wilberforce continues to work to liberate slaves in Britain—which doesn’t happen until 1833…with the Slavery Abolition Act. The government finally ends the institution of slavery, and repays the farmers for their lost workers. At that point, Wilberforce is in retirement with failing health. When he hears that the Bill will be passed in Parliament, he says,

GAUGER: Thank God that I have lived to witness a day in which England is willing to give twenty millions sterling for the Abolition of Slavery.

William Wilberforce dies just three days later, having lived to see his life’s work achieved at last.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Eicher.

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