William Wilberforce and the Long Campaign

For twenty years, William Wilberforce stood before the British Parliament and lost. Year after year, from 1787 onward, he introduced bills to abolish the slave trade. Year after year, wealthy merchants, indifferent politicians, and entrenched interests voted him down. His health deteriorated. Friends urged him to quit. Critics mocked his persistence as naive idealism. But Wilberforce had planted his seed in the soil of conviction, and he refused to pull it up simply because the harvest was delayed.…