1787 to 1833 · Story · Justice
Wilberforce and the Slave Trade
William Wilberforce was the parliamentary head of the campaign against the British slave trade, which a committee began in London in 1787.
After the vote of February 1807, Wilberforce said, “Never mind the miserable 16, let us think of our glorious 283.”
Open your mouth for those with no voice, for the cause of all the dispossessed.
- When
- 1787 to 1833 AD
Summary
The opponents of the British slave trade made their case in print and in Parliament. A former master of slave ships confessed his part in the trade, an African who had been sold told his own story, and Wilberforce first moved the question in the House of Commons in 1789. The story shows the prophets' demand of justice for the oppressed pressed through books and votes until the trade was abolished by law.
- Wilberforce took the end of the slave trade as a charge from God, naming it in his journal on 28 October 1787 as one of two great objects set before him.
- The Act that received the royal assent on 25 March 1807 ended the British slave trade, while the people already enslaved in the colonies stayed enslaved.
- Both sides appealed to Scripture. In 1788 Raymund Harris read Leviticus 25:44 to 46 as the law's sanction of the trade, and John Newton printed Matthew 7:12 on the title page of his confession.
- Wilberforce lived to see the Commons give a second reading to the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery, and he died on 29 July 1833.
The Two Great Objects of 1787
A sentence written on a Sunday in 1787 names the cause this story follows.
The campaign against the British slave trade belongs to the value of justice because its leaders asked the law of their country to defend people who had no voice in it. It matters to any reader who asks what justice for the oppressed requires of a citizen and a lawmaker.
It answers two questions: who carried the campaign from Wilberforce's journal of 1787 to his death in 1833, and how the trade's opponents and its defenders each argued from Scripture. It gives the campaign in dated events with the record that fixes each date, the witnesses who wrote against the trade, the arguments of both sides, and what the Act of 1807 left undone.
In the autumn of 1787 Wilberforce wrote in his journal, “God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners”. His sons, Robert Isaac and Samuel Wilberforce, printed the entry in the Life they published in five volumes in 1838 to honour their father. Its journal and diary passages are his own words as they chose them.
Learn to do right; seek justice and correct the oppressor. Defend the fatherless and plead the case of the widow.”Isaiah commands God's people to seek justice and correct the oppressor, and this story follows that command into the law of a nation.
The Campaign in Dates, 1785 to 1833
The dates run from Clarkson's resolve in 1785 to Wilberforce's death in 1833.
Twenty years passed between the committee's first meeting and the royal assent that ended the British slave trade.
| Event | Date | What fixes the date |
|---|---|---|
| Clarkson resolves at Wades Mill to see the trade ended | Summer 1785 AD | Known to the season from Clarkson's own History (1808), volume 1, chapter 7 |
| The committee for abolition meets in London | 22 May 1787 AD | Known from Clarkson's History, volume 1, chapter 10 |
| Wilberforce names his aims in his journal | 28 October 1787 AD | Known from the Life (1838), volume 1, page 149, citing his journal |
| Newton's Thoughts and Harris's Scriptural Researches are printed | 1788 AD | Known to the year from each title page, which reads M.DCC.LXXXVIII |
| Equiano dates the dedication of his Narrative | 24 March 1789 AD | Known from the dedication of the Narrative (1789) |
| Wilberforce first moves the question in the Commons | 12 May 1789 AD | Known from the Life, volume 1, the chapter of 1789, and his diary |
| Wesley writes to Wilberforce | 24 February 1791 AD | Known from the Life, volume 1, page 297 |
| Wesley dies | 2 March 1791 AD | Known from the sons' note in the Life, volume 1, page 297 |
| The motion is lost by 88 to 163 | 1791 AD | Known to the year from the Life, volume 1, page 299 |
| The Commons divide 283 to 16 | February 1807 AD | Known to the month from the Life, volume 3, page 298, with his diary of 23 February |
| The abolition of the trade becomes law | 25 March 1807 AD | Known from two sources that agree, the Life, volume 3, page 302, and Clarkson, volume 2, chapter 10 |
| The Bill for the Abolition of Slavery is read a second time in the Commons | 1833 AD | Known to the year from the Life, volume 5, page 370 |
| Wilberforce dies | 29 July 1833 AD | Known from the Life, volume 5, page 373 |
Wesley writes to Wilberforce, Wesley dies, The motion is lost by 88 to 163, The Commons divide 283 to 16, The abolition of the trade becomes law, The Bill for the Abolition of Slavery is read a second time in the Commons, Wilberforce dies
From Wades Mill to the Royal Assent
Clarkson's History and the sons' Life give the course of the campaign from 1785 to 1807.
Thomas Clarkson's own part began on a road in Hertfordshire. Riding home after writing a prize essay on slavery, he “sat down disconsolate on the turf by the roadside” near Wades Mill.
There, he wrote, “a thought came into my mind, that if the contents of the Essay were true, it was time some person should see these calamities to their end”.
In Clarkson's account the London committee carried the cause “labouring afterwards with Mr. Wilberforce as a parliamentary head”.
Wilberforce's diary records that at his first motion in the Commons he “was enabled to make my motion”, speaking for “three hours and a half”.
In the letter the Life prints as John Wesley's last to Wilberforce, Wesley wrote, “Go on in the name of God”. The sons add that Wesley sank into a lethargy the next day and died “upon the 2nd of March”.
After the defeat of 1791 the motion failed again in later years before the Commons carried it.
The royal assent to the Bill was given by commission, “the Lord Chancellor, Lord Auckland, and Lord Holland, being the royal commissioners”, in the words of the Life.
Clarkson gives the day as “on Wednesday the twenty-fifth”, names “the Lord Chancellor (Erskine)” and calls the assent “the last act of the administration of Lord Grenville”.
The Witnesses in Print, 1788 and 1789
Two men who had seen the trade from inside it published against it in those two years.
John Newton wrote as a man who had once commanded slave ships. In Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, printed in London in 1788, he made his confession in print.
He wrote that he was “bound, in conscience, to take shame to myself by a public confession”. He called it a confession which “however sincere, comes too late to prevent, or repair, the misery and mischief to which I have, formerly, been accessory”.
He also wrote, “I was, once, an active instrument, in a business at which my heart now shudders” (the spelling normalised from the 1788 print).
In everything, then, do to others as you would have them do to you. For this is the essence of the Law and the Prophets.Jesus gives the rule that sums up the Law and the Prophets, the rule Newton set before his readers and Equiano turned into a question for Christians.
Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative was printed in London for the author.
In its second chapter he tells of brothers sold in different lots at the sale that followed his crossing.
He asks those he calls nominal Christians whether they learned this from the God who tells them, in the words of Matthew 7:12, to “do to others as you would have them do to you”.
He goes on, “Is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends to toil for your luxury and lust of gain?” The account of that sale is his own.
What the Act of 1807 Left Standing
Wilberforce's sons record the last stage of the cause and his death in their fifth volume.
The Act of 1807 abolished the trade, and slavery itself stood in the British colonies until the Bill of 1833.
That Bill was “read for the second time in the House of Commons on the Friday night” in the last days of Wilberforce's life. His sons record what he said, “Thank God that I should have lived to witness a day in which England is willing to give twenty millions sterling for the Abolition of Slavery”.
He died at three o'clock in the morning of a Monday, aged 73 years and 11 months.
Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen: to break the chains of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and tear off every yoke?Isaiah names the setting free of the oppressed as the fast God chooses, and the Bill of 1833 turned from the trade to the state of the enslaved.
“It is to undo the heavy burden laid on the back of the poor servant, under which he is ready to sink. It is to let the oppressed go free from the oppression which makes his life bitter to him.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Isaiah 58:6Puritan
Scripture on Both Sides in 1788
Harris read Leviticus 25 as leave for the trade, and Exodus 21 and Matthew 7 stand against that reading.
Raymund Harris published Scriptural Researches on the Licitness of the Slave-Trade at Liverpool in 1788.
He held that the trade had “the sanction of Divine Authority in its support”. Reading Leviticus 25:44 to 46, he added that it “was also positively encouraged (I had almost said, commanded)” (the spelling normalised from the 1788 print).
Your menservants and maidservants shall come from the nations around you, from whom you may purchase them. You may also purchase them from the foreigners residing among you or their clans living among you who are born in your land. These may become your property. You may leave them to your sons after you to inherit as property; you can make them slaves for life. But as for your brothers, the Israelites, no man may rule harshly over his brother.Harris read this law, which let Israel buy slaves from the nations around it, as divine leave for the trade.
The law of Moses that Harris cited also holds a law on the taking of men.
Whoever kidnaps another man must be put to death, whether he sells him or the man is found in his possession.Read beside Leviticus 25, this verse condemns to death any trade in people who were seized by force before they were sold.
for the sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave traders and liars and perjurers, and for anyone else who is averse to sound teachingPaul names slave traders among the lawless and rebellious for whom the law was given.
James Ramsay answered Harris in print in 1788 with an Examination of the Rev. Mr. Harris's Scriptural Researches.
Newton and Equiano appealed to Matthew 7:12, and the objection to them is that Leviticus 25:44 to 46, the law Harris cited, stands in the same Scriptures.
Read The Bible and Slavery, which states that objection at full strength
Books to Read Next
Each of these five works was printed between 1788 and 1838 and can be read free online.
The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament
Thomas Clarkson · 1808
Clarkson tells the campaign from his own resolve in 1785 to the royal assent of 1807, in two volumes.
Read it free at Project GutenbergThe Life of William Wilberforce
Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce · 1838
His sons' five volumes print his journal and diary entries, the divisions of 1791 and 1807, and his last days.
Read the first volume free at archive.orgThoughts upon the African Slave Trade
John Newton · 1788
Newton's pamphlet gives his account of the trade at greater length than any quotation of it.
Read it free at archive.orgThe Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African
Olaudah Equiano · 1789
The Narrative is Equiano's account of his own life in his own words.
Read it free at Project GutenbergScriptural Researches on the Licitness of the Slave-Trade
Raymund Harris · 1788
The tract gives Harris's whole case in his own words.
Read it free at archive.orgJustice Sought Through Law
Micah 6:8 names acting justly first of the three things the LORD requires.
Across the record from 1787 to 1833, acting justly meant public work carried on for many years through writing, testimony and repeated votes before the law changed.
He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?Micah addresses what the LORD requires to every person, lawmakers among them.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament (London, 1808), volume 1, chapters 7 and 10.
- Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament (London, 1808), volume 2, chapter 10.
- Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce (London: John Murray, 1838), volume 1, pages 149, 297 and 299 and the chapter of 1789.
- Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce (London: John Murray, 1838), volume 3, pages 298 and 302.
- Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce (London: John Murray, 1838), volume 5, pages 370 and 373.
- John Newton, Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade (London: J. Buckland and J. Johnson, 1788)
- Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (London, printed for the author, 1789), the dedication and volume 1, chapter 2.
- Raymund Harris, Scriptural Researches on the Licitness of the Slave-Trade (Liverpool: H. Hodgson, 1788)
- James Ramsay, Examination of the Rev. Mr. Harris's Scriptural Researches (1788)
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Isaiah 58:6.
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