British Member of Parliament William Wilberforce was born today in 1759 in East Riding, Yorkshire, England.
He was a devout Evangelical Christian and conservative who led the effort to abolish slavery throughout most of the United Kingdom.
While in the United States Democrat dominated southern states insisted on keeping slavery, which was antithetical to our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Wilberforce worked tireless for 20 years to urge Parliament to enact the Abolition of the Slave Trade bill during the 1789 session of Parliament. The bill didn’t become law until July 26, 1833. Wilberforce who was suffering from prolonged ill health, died in the early morning hours three days later on July 29.
England ended the slave trade without firing a shot. In the United States, slavery came to end after a bloody and prolonged civil war that nearly tore the nation apart. It took the creation of the Republican Party, a Republican president (Abraham Lincoln) to finally wrest slaves away from their Democrat masters.