Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery

I purchased this book with low expectations, assuming it was a hastily-written biography produced to promote the upcoming Wilberforce film. I was very pleasantly surprised.

The author, Eric Metaxas, has produced a masterpiece worthy of its subject. Metaxas is an eloquent and fluid writer, and he brings to life one of Britain's most gifted and eloquent politicians.

William Wilberforce electrified Parliament in his early years, before he yet had a cause. His silver tongue and quit wit won him many friends, including Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger. Had Wilberforce continued along this path, he might well have succeeded Pitt.

With respect and sensitivity, Metaxas documents a powerful change to Wilberforce. Through a serious and intelligent conversion to Evangelical (Methodist) Christianity, Wilberforce's life was forever altered. His heart was changed ... to God and humanity. He could no longer ignore the sufferings of African slaves, kidnapped and shipped under horrible conditions to a living death in Britain's Caribbean colonies. He brought his faith to bear on politics ... as controversial in his day as in ours.

Metaxas dramatically shows how much Wilberforce suffered for the sake of abolition. He faced powerful and dangerous foes without fear or malice. By the force of his stubborn will, Wilberforce awakened the British conscience. He refused to turn back, despite many bitter setbacks. Returning to Parliament year after year, Wilberforce finally saw the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Then, mere days before his death, he witnessed Parliament's history-changing vote to outlaw slavery throughout the British colonies.

Eric Metaxas provides the story behind the movie "Amazing Grace." Whereas the movie somewhat down-plays Wilberforce's Christianity, Metaxes' book clearly hightlights Wilberforce's faith in Christ as the primary motivator for his campaign for the end of slavery.

Metaxas vividly portrays the real and raw experiences that Wilberforce endured including intense opposition. Readers see in Wilberforce, as the subtitle suggests, a heroic and resilient Christian whose faith impacted not only his life, but the lives of millions.

It was Wilberforce's freedom from the slavery of sin that led him to fight for freedom from the sin of slavery. Read "Amazing Grace" and learn the rest of the story.

Rewiever: Bob Kellemen is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction , Spiritual Friends, and Soul Physicians.

In this biography Eric Metaxas traces William Wilberforce's roots, schooling, friends and faith to gain an understanding of what propelled the man to take on and defeat the powerful and politically connected slave traders/merchants of the late 18th century. It is a wonderful look into a period of time where one man leads a groundswell movement that results in an about face in Great Britain's perception of the slave trade, and ultimately slavery itself - a tidal wave that crossed the Atlantic to the U.S.
I would highly recommend "Amazing Grace" to anyone, not just for it's historical significance, but for those with a mind to effect change in their own community.

Wilberforce was a titanic and heroic figure, analogous to John Adams after his Presidency fighting in Congress alone against slavery. But the book is terrible history and totally ignores all the many other political heroes. Earl Grey, who the tea is named after, never once appears yet it was he who launched the 1807 legislation that Metaxa just about entirely gives Wilberforce credit for, and whose Administration ended the slave trade in the colonies in 1830. John Russell is invisible, even though he was key to organizing the opposition to the forces of reaction. Charles Fox is made to look like a clown. The representation of Pitt is banal. It's as if a book on Johm Adam's courage (captured in the film Amristad)gave him all the credit for ending slavery and ignored John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln (who he?) and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Mextaxa's discussions of the role of Proclamation and working class activism are truly nonsensical; they were as much a factor in politics as letters to the editor in a newspaper. This was an era where Catholics could not own property, even the middle class could not vote, and the Peterboro riots came close to creating open rebellion. Wilberforce was as much a hero as Metaxa portrays him but he did not do all this through his own Christian nobility and purity. He was perhaps Britain's Martin Luther King; he set the moral agenda. But Lyndon Johnson worked Congress and Andrew Young, the students who went to the South and faced off against the cops and the killers (Medgar Evers).... These were heroes, too, and King always knew that without such people he could not have moved his peoples' cause ahead. Wilberforce needed and respected the politicians who formed the Ministry of All Talents (I think I have the name right) and the great business liberals like Samuel Whitbread (he of the beer).

This book is a religious tract in disguise. It has no index and does not cite its sources. It's not a scholarly book but a homily. It frustrates me to be negative about it, because Wilberforce was indeed everything Metaxa say he was. But to give him basically the entire moral and political credit for ending slavery is to trivialize the issue, the struggle, and in the end himself. It's too much about Wilberforce and not enough about the Heroic Campaign.

Wow. This book is well-researched and has much worth-while information. But, oh, my. I've never read a book (and I've read many) with such frustrating invasions of the author's personal--for lack of a better word--wit. Here are two examples that I read yesterday. These were within the same paragraph:

[their lifestyles were similiar, including overeating] "thus, like whales in a pod . . .,"

[The kings sanity would come and go over the years but for now he became sane] "like a kidney stone, this too passed."

Over and over and over again, these inane "witticisms," trite and overused expressions, and etc. kick me out of the biography, which could be stirring and should be powerful.

very frustrating

Because of the movie, there are a couple other Wilberforce books that have come out in the past month, but this one is the best. Really well written, I wasn't expecting such good writing. Not sure what I was expecting, but this book was excellent.

I hate to judge a book I haven't read, but a previous reviewer stated that this book has no index. That to me is a No-No. It suggests the author is either lazy or does not wish to be challenged or, at best, does not wish to open his work to be examined by others. Wilberforce was an extremely important figure in the anti-slavery movement. Any biography of him simply HAS to be open to scrutiny by others in the field. As someone who has written a biography (Thomas Garrett) an Index is an essential guide to help readers find what the author has to say about the subject, as well as about other figures and events in the subject's life. Without an Index, the reader is asked to accept what the author said about the subject as being the first and last word. No serious researcher will accept that. So I will delete this book from my Wish List and wait untill a serious biography is written.

That the name of William Wilberforce has largely been lost to history seems somehow unfair. Wilberforce was the driving force behind the abolition of slavery within the British Empire. A Member of Parliament for forty-five years, the results of his efforts are still seen and understood in Western society to this day. Though his impact was felt not only at his time, but has extended through history, few people know his name. In Amazing Grace, Eric Metaxas' new biography of Wilberforce, which was timed to coincide with the release of a film by the same title (which was, in turn, timed to coincide with the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade) he makes the valid comparison to a scientist who discovers the cure for an inoculation against a terrible disease. As the disease is eradicated and passes out of memory, so the scientist's name is likely to be forgotten. And this is what seems to have happened to Wilberforce. We live in a day where slavery is unthinkable and we can hardly conceive of a time when the best and brightest of society defended it and thought little of pillaging the African continent for their own gain.

Though those of us who remember Wilberforce know him primarily as the leader of the fight to abolish the slave trade, the truth is that he fought to great battles, the first against slavery and the second for the reformation of manners (which is to say a kind of social reform against rampant immorality and vice). While this biography focuses primarily on the first of these battles, the second does receive some attention as well. Life in Wilberforce's day was brutal, decadent, violent and vulgar. Societal evils were many and horrific: "epidemic alcoholism, child prostitution, child labor, frequent public executions for petty crimes, public dissections and burnings of executed criminals, and unspeakable public cruelty to animals." All of these were far more visible than slavery. Wilberforce knew that, if society was to be brought into line with the commandments of God, it would need to begin with the reformation of manners and he spent much of his life attempting to ban what was vulgar and unbiblical and to promote what was beautiful and Scriptural, knowing that success in the small things would eventually lead to success in greater things. Wilberforce has rightly been credited with giving the West its social conscience.

Having read this biography, there are at least three great lessons I have drawn from the life of this great Christian. First, I have seen the value of persistence. Wilberforce fought for years and years before seeing any measurable success in his battle to outlaw the slave trade. Had he not persisted, it may have taken many more years and hundreds of thousands of lives for the trade to be abolished. Second, I have seen that there is hope even more the most evil of the many evils in our society. There was a time when very few could have imagined that slavery would ever be banned and yet, in one lifetime, attitudes were changed so that today slavery is almost unimaginable. As we think about the evils that plague contemporary society we can have hope that minds, hearts and attitudes can change. Third, I have seen the value of incremental change for Wilberforce was willing to accept incremental improvements. At one point he supported a bill, passed on a trial basis, that would regulate the number of slaves that were permitted to be transported on a single ship. Previously slaves had been laid in rows on benches, chained on their sides with the front of one pressed against the back of the next. Following the legislation, improvements were made. Though the bill implicitly and explicitly supported the continuance of slavery, Wilberforce saw it as a step in the right direction and was willing to support it. Another time he voted for a bill that required plantation owners to register all of their slaves. While this bill also supported slavery, Wilberforce saw that a registry of slaves would keep plantation owners from adding to their number of slaves by buying them from illegal slave smugglers. Incremental changes may lead to greater and more profound changes.

Some who have read the book have made note of the author's occasional use of sophomoric humor. Though there are several examples, perhaps the most blatant falls outside of the flow of the book's text in the Acknowledgments. "I wish first and foremost to thank my typist, yours truly, for quite literally transcribing my thoughts as I thought them, a feat hardly to be explained, and yet quite literally true." I suppose some find this kind of humor to be funny but in a serious biography it seems a little out of place. Other examples are less obvious and are perhaps more clever than obnoxious: "Wilberforce may have been crazy like a fox, but Fox himself was so often drunk as the proverbial skunk that Wilberforce wisely decided to forego badgering him about becoming involved. Even if Fox had initially assented to lend his name to the cause, it seems rather likely that he may have eventually weaseled out of any real commitment anyway, and it is always possible that, given his affection for dissolute living, he may even have become a mole for the opposition." If you missed the humor in that paragraph, read it again and you should catch it.

Though the author's expression can seem a trifle obnoxious at times, this is true more in the early pages than in the majority of the text. The reader who presses on will be richly rewarded, not only with great content but even with some excellent prose, a brief example of which I will provide here. "And thus, history: three men, each named William, each twenty-seven years old, talking at the base of an ancient oak tree on a hill in May: one prime minister, one prime-minister-to-be, and one who would stand from that moment forward at the center of something so big and beyond any single man that a tree whose life had begun several centuries earlier, and would continue for nearly two more, was the humble creature chosen to bear mute witness to the conversation."

Despite its few problems, and though this may not be among the greatest biographies ever written, it is certainly a good one and is a worthy addition to any library, personal, church or public. It wonderfully describes and analyzes the life of a great Christian man who can and should serve as an inspiration even today. I enjoyed it thoroughly and commend it to you.

I just finished "Amazing Grace" and found it to be informative, amusing, and above all, inspiring. It is a perfect antidote to the cynicism and pessimism of our age, but neither does it gloss over or romanticize the real problems of England in the Georgian era. If you are afraid of history books I would also recommend it, as the author has a very light touch and doesn't bombard the reader with dry or irrelevant details. Highly recommended.

I agree withthe author that Wilberforce was a great man and he had a great role in English politics and society, but there is just not enough detail in this book. Key areas of his life are glossed over. When discussing the most important speech he made to secure his County Seat in Yorkshire, he does not even analyse what was said by Wilberforce. This seems less of a scholarly work, more mere hero worship. Although I think it is a good introductory read. It could have been so much more and will need to buy a more detailed book in order to get a truer and more analytical perspective.