A small boy aged ten was playing
in the grounds of his uncle?s rural
villa on the edge of Wimbledon Common
in the summer of 1769 when the family
carriage drew up at the door. The
carriage contained the boy?s uncle and
a clergyman in his forties. The boy was
the young William Wilberforce, and the
clergyman was John Newton.
No one in 1769 would have foreseen that
these two men would be the key
characters in the abolition of the
slave trade in 1807. Here, John Pollock
tells the story of how they came from
different backgrounds and amazingly
different earlier lives to build a
strong friendship and partnership in
the gospel?and how God used them to
achieve a great victory in the British
Parliament and US Congress against the
slave trade.