The Politician Who Stayed

In October 1785, William Wilberforce sat in a carriage crossing the French countryside, reading Philip Doddridge's The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. The book cracked something open in him. By the time he reached England, the young parliamentarian — wealthy, charming, a favorite of Prime Minister Pitt — knew he had been claimed by God.

His first instinct was to leave politics entirely. But John Newton, the former slave trader turned pastor, urged him to stay. "God has raised you up for the good of the church and the good of the nation," Newton told him.

So Wilberforce walked straight from his conversion into a political wilderness. For eighteen years he introduced bill after bill to abolish the slave trade, and for eighteen years Parliament voted him down. He was mocked in cartoons, threatened with violence, told by doctors his frail body could not endure the fight. The temptation to quit — to retreat into comfortable private faith — stalked him constantly.

He did not quit. In 1807, Parliament finally abolished the trade. In 1833, just three days before his death, slavery itself was abolished throughout the British Empire.