Parallel of the Anti-Slavery Movement in the 19th Century

The parliamentary leadership prior to 1823 rested with William Wilberforce, the great prophet of the anti-slavery movement. The original Anti-Slavery movement was initially somewhat more cautious and limited in its objectives, but it responded to pressures from the vast and active popular movement and switched its objective from amelioration and gradual extinction of slavery to outright abolition. The women members of the anti-slavery movement were particularly vigorous in attacking the compromises of the 'ameliorationists'. Indeed in 1823, when a number of abolitionists including Wilberforce took up the cause of abolishing slavery itself, they established the Society for Mitigating and Gradually Abolishing the State of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions. Throughout the anti-slavery battle, the cause of immediate abolition was opposed by those who put forward a supposed need for the slaves to become worthy of freedom through a long probation of bondage.