Who was William Wilberforce? See Amazing Grace

The film Amazing Grace, debuting in US theaters February 23, is the first time that Hollywood has brought to the Silver Screen the life of the one of history's greatest statesmen. William Wilberforce, played in Amazing Grace by Ioan Gruffudd (Fantastic Four) is being introduced to many in the world today for the first time. It's a shame that it takes a movie to spark interest in history, but that seems to be the case more and more.

Wilberforce, however, is no fictional character. And the movie Amazing Grace is no fictional enterprise. It's a true story - and indeed one of the most important "true stories" in world history. The film also stars Albert Finney (Erin Brockovich), Michael Gambon (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), Rufus Sewell (Legend of Zorro), and Ciaran Hinds (Rome).

William Wilberforce grew up in Hull, England. He engaged in rather gregarious living while in college, sewing his wild oats. And being drawn to politics, he ran for Parliament at the tender age of twenty-one. He had only recently graduated from college. Wilberforce took to enjoying the high life, mixing with the political elite in London and enjoying the prestige of serving in the House of Commons. But, somewhere along the line, he had a spiritual awakening of sorts. He would call it a conversion experience.

He befriended John Newton, a leading evangelical Anglican and author of the hymn we know as "Amazing Grace." So serious was his newfound Christian faith that he almost abandoned politics. He was urged by Newton and others, including William Pitt the Younger and abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, to remain in politics and take up the anti-slavery cause in Parliament. Thus began one of the longest and most desperate "David-and-Goliath" struggles in political history.

Slavery had become a major, deeply entrenched, money-making institution in the world's economy. In fact, to say it was entrenched almost under-states it. Given the dominance of agriculture in the British Empire, including its North American colonies and crucial West Indies possessions, slavery was seen as indispensable. Picture how dependent today's economy is on oil and you'll get an idea of how entrenched slavery was in the 1600s and 1700s. This was the institution that William Wilberforce was up against.

And the slave trade, far from being a peripheral, incidental part of the overall picture, was seen as slavery's lifeblood. Indeed, in the newly independent United States, the Constitutional Convention almost fractured when northern and middle American delegates pushed for an abolition to the slave trade. Everyone understood that, as barbaric as the slave trade was, it was the lifeblood of the institution itself. Without the influx of new slave labor, the long-term prospects of the institution itself were not good. Anyone taking on the slave trade was in for a rough ride. And this was certainly the case for Wilberforce.

Wilberforce persisted through ill health, threats against his life, numerous political setbacks, betrayal, and countless other obstacles in his campaign to rid the British Empire first of the slave trade and then of slavery itself. He lived to see the first abolished and died just shy of the latter.

His other cause involved societal morality. Wilberforce once said: "God has put before me two great objects: the abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of manners." He was a staunch evangelical Christian, and he believed that moral principles were essential to right living.

Wilberforce was not perfect. Due to severe health challenges, he turned to one of the most available drugs at the time - opium. It was an addiction that he would struggle with during his long career as a reformer. Nevertheless, historians generally regard Wilberforce, despite his flaws, as among the first order of social activists and Christian statesmen.