October 28, 1787
Wilberforce realized the need “for some reformer of the nation’s morals, who should raise his voice in the high places of the land and do within the church and nearer the throne what Wesley had accomplished in the meeting and among the multitude.”
“So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the trade’s wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would; I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.”
Source: Christopher Hancock, The Shrimp Who Stopped Slavery in Christian History Magazine— Issue 53: William Wilberforce: Fighting the Slave Trade.