Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the abolition of the British slave trade

Amazing Grace DVD cover. Image source: Amazon.com

Amazing Grace (2006) tells the story of William Wilberforce and the abolitionist campaign in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Directed by Michael Apted (the Up series (1963-2019)), the film has a cast that is, well, amazing:

• Ioan Gruffudd (Phillip Bosinney in The Forsyte Saga (2002), to choose just one earlier role) as William Wilberforce:
  
  
  
  
  A note on his depiction: Portraits of Wilberforce from the 1790s generally show him with powdered hair or a powdered wig; unpowdered natural hair would seem to date from a somewhat later period.
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of William Wilberforce by Karl Anton Hickel, 1794. Image credit: Wilberforce House Museum/Bridgeman Images. Image source: Art UK
  
  
• Romola Garai (Gwendolen Harleth in Daniel Deronda (2002)) as his wife Barbara Spooner Wilberforce:
  
  
  
  
  Costume designer Jenny Beavan and the hair stylists seem to be modelling Barbara Wilberforce's look on Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, with her big hair. . .
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (detail), by Thomas Gainsborough, 1783. Image source: National Gallery of Art 1937.1.93

  . . .and big hats:

  
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (detail), by Thomas Gainsborough, 1784. Image credit: Kensington Palace Crown to Couture exhibition.
  
  Georgiana Cavendish would have been several rungs above Barbara Spooner Wilberforce on the social ladder, and so the Duchess's style was probably quite a bit grander. This is confirmed by what must be the wedding portrait of Barbara Spooner, which shows her in a relatively simple empire-waisted dress and without an elaborate coiffure.
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of Barbara Spooner Wilberforce by John Russell, ca. 1797. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
  
  This portrait was used by Beavan as a model for Barbara Spooner's wedding dress in the film, though the movie version is less demure and there is no veil:
  
  
  
  
  
• Benedict Cumberbatch (Freddy in Tipping the Velvet (2002)) as Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger:
  
  
  
  
  Cumberbatch is good physical casting for this role, as can be seen from the portrait below. Pitt was in his mid-twenties in 1783, the year of his appointment as Prime Minister:
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of William Pitt the Younger (detail) by George Romney, c. 1783. Image source: Tate Gallery
  
  
• Nicholas Farrell (Edmund Bertram in Mansfield Park (1983)) as Henry Thornton, anti-slavery evangelist, Member of Parliament for Southwark, and cousin of Wilberforce:
  
  
  
  
  Henry Thornton in a mezzotint from 1802:
  
  
  
  
  
  Henry Thornton (detail), mezzotint by James Ward, after a portrait by John Hoppner, 1802. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG D14768
  
  
• Sylvestra Le Touzel (Fanny Price in Mansfield Park (1983)) as his wife Marianne Sykes Thornton:
  
  
  
  
  Marianne Sykes Thornton is the only one of the major characters for whom I couldn't find a contemporary likeness.
• Albert Finney (Dr. Austin Sloper in Washington Square (1997)) as John Newton, evangelical priest, former slaveship captain, and writer of the words to the hymn "Amazing Grace":
  
  
  
  
  Contemporary portraits show John Newton to be a weatherbeaten but conventionally attired clergyman, not the hair-shirted wigless penitent portrayed by Finney:
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of the Rev. John Newton by John Russell, 1788. Image source: Hymnology Archive
  
  
• Michael Gambon (Squire Hamley in Wives and Daughters (1999)) as Charles Fox, Whig leader in the House of Commons:
  
  
  
  
  A contemporary portrait of Fox:
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of Charles James Fox (detail), by an unknown artist, ca. 1790–95. Image credit: Parliamentary Art Collection. Image source: Art UK
  
  
• Ciaran Hinds (Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion (1995)) as (not yet) Lord Tarleton:
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of then-Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton in the year of the Parliamentary debate on the American War of Independence depicted in Amazing Grace; Hinds definitely captures Tarleton's military bearing and intense gaze.
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of Colonel Tarleton (detail), by Joshua Reynolds, 1782. Image source: National Gallery NG5985
  
  
• Toby Jones (Smee in Finding Neverland (2004)) as the Duke of Clarence, (not yet) King William IV:
  
  
  
  
  Miniature of the Duke of Clarence around the time he entered Parliament in 1789:
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of King William IV [the Duke of Clarence] (detail), by Richard Cosway, circa 1789. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG L176
  
  
• Youssou N'Dour (the Senegalese pop star) as the formerly enslaved writer and antislavery activist Olaudah Equiano:
  
  
  
  
  Equiano's appearance seems to be based in part on the famous portrait in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) in Exeter:
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of a Man in a Red Suit, attributed to Allan Ramsay. Image credit: RAMM. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
  
  
• Bill Paterson (Mr. Gibson in Wives and Daughters (1999)) as (not yet) Lord Dundas (i.e., Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville after 1802), a proponent of gradual abolition:
  
  
  
  
  Henry Dundas in 1782, after a portrait by Joshua Reynolds:
  
  
  
  
  
  Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (detail), mezzotint by John Raphael Smith, after portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1782. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG D19829
  
  
• Rufus Sewell (Will Ladislaw in Middlemarch (1995)) as Thomas Clarkson, the advocate of abolition:
  
  
  
  
  The appearances of Sewell and Finney seem to be the designers' greatest departures from the guidance provided by historical portraiture. All likenesses of Clarkson that I've seen show him in a powdered wig or in shortish natural hair, not with Sewell's flowing locks:
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of Thomas Clarkson (detail) by Carl Fredrik von Breda, 1788. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG 235
  
  

But despite the excellence signalled by the director and cast, as well as the evident care taken with many of the costumes and settings, the screenplay by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things (2002)) undermines the entire enterprise. It simplifies, and at times falsifies, the complex history of abolition in Britain.

Meanwhile, its frequent jumps in time and place can be confusing. The main action occurs over a 25-year span (1782–1807), but to my inexpert eye the characters all look roughly the same ages in nearly every scene. As a result it's often not immediately apparent when or where a scene is taking place. As one example among many, in the first scene of the film Wilberforce meets Barbara Spooner in Bath. Their marriage doesn't occur until 80 minutes later in this nearly two-hour long movie. It feels as though their courtship must have gone on for years. So I was surprised to learn that in actuality they had a whirlwind courtship: they met on 15 April 1797 and Wilberforce proposed eight days later; they were married on 30 May.

The movie portrays Wilberforce in heroic terms; early in the film Marianne Thornton calls him "the most committed abolitionist in Britain." While Wilberforce was the leading Parliamentary advocate of ending the horrific slave trade, the bills he brought before the House of Commons beginning in 1791 did not actually address the abolition of slavery or the emancipation of the enslaved. 

The House of Commons 1793–1794, by Karl Anton Hickel. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG 745

It's important to look at Wilberforce's attitudes and actions in the context of his own era. Wilberforce and his allies moved to end the slave trade while leaving slavery untouched, no doubt, because they believed ending the slave trade was at the limit of what was politically possible. But at the time there were committed abolitionists who fought to end slavery completely in the British colonies. A Quaker petition submitted to Parliament in 1783 in support of an earlier bill on the slave trade stated,

Under the countenance of the laws of this country, many thousands of these our fellow-creatures, entitled to natural rights of mankind, are held, as personal property, in cruel bondage.

The petition, which carried 273 signatures, is clearly a call for ending the "cruel bondage" of slavery, not only the slave trade, and restoring to the enslaved the "natural rights of mankind." Quakers would continue to be among the leaders of the anti-slavery movement in Britain (as well as the U.S.), which also involved Anglicans, Catholics, and others.

In Amazing Grace this social background to Wilberforce's actions is largely absent, and several important figures, such as the advocate Granville Sharp, the poet William Cowper, and the former slave Ignatius Sancho, are missing entirely. Other major abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson and Olaudah Equiano are given merely supporting roles.

Clarkson and Sharp, along with Josiah Wedgwood (also absent from the film), were among the founding members of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787. Wedgwood's medallion "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" was created for the members of the Society.

"Am I Not A Man And A Brother?" Jasperware medallion produced for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, designed by Josiah Wedgwood, c. 1787–1790, originally modelled by William Hackwood. Dimensions: 1.13" wide by 1.25" high. Image source: Clark Art Institute, 2021.11.1

Equiano's 1789 autobiography went through nine editions over the five years following its first publication. He embarked on speaking tours, and was also a founder of the Sons of Africa, an abolitionist organization of formerly enslaved men that also included Ottobah Cugoano. As you may have guessed, neither the Sons of Africa nor Cugoano is mentioned in the movie.

Frontispiece and title page of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, Vol. I (London, 1789). Image source: Internet Archive

And Cowper's poem The Negro's Complaint (1788) was reprinted for decades. The following illustration is from an 1826 edition:

Image source: Internet Archive

The poem reads in part,

Forc'd from home and all its pleasures,
Afric's coast I left forlorn;
To increase a stranger's treasures,
O'er the raging billows borne;

Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But though slave they have enroll'd me
Minds are never to be sold.

Still in thought as free as ever,
What are England's rights, I ask,
Me from my delights to sever,
Me to torture, me to task?

Also missing from Amazing Grace is Chief Justice Lord Mansfield.

Portrait of William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, in his official robes as Lord Chief Justice (detail), by John Singleton Copley, 1783. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG 172 

Mansfield's opinions in the Somerset and Zong Massacre cases were celebrated among abolitionists. He and his wife also raised their mixed-race niece, Dido Elizabeth Belle, on equivalent terms with her white cousin Elizabeth Murray.

Dido Elizabeth Belle and Elizabeth Murray (detail), by David Martin, c. 1776.

More than four decades later Mansfield was still so well-known that a novel set on the English estate of a slave-owner referenced him in its title: Mansfield Park.

All this is not to diminish Wilberforce's crucial role in the abolition of the British slave trade. He was a remarkable man who advocated for the end of the inhumane shipment of kidnapped Africans, as property, to the plantations of the New World, a stance shared by a distinct minority of those who held political power at the time. But Wilberforce did not almost single-handedly bring about the abolition of the slave trade. Far more attention should have been paid to the social movements that shaped and supported him.

Beyond this distortion, though, Knight's screenplay depicts incidents that either did not happen as shown, or could not have happened at all. Early in the film we see a 1782 debate in the House of Commons about the continuing war against American independence. In that debate Wilberforce, opposing the continuation of the war, engages with the Duke of Clarence (the future King William IV) and Lord Tarleton, a former military commander wounded in that war. Afterwards, during a card game between Wilberforce and the Duke at a gentleman's club, the Duke attempts to wager ownership of his black coachman (and the script has him use the n-word).

Toby Jones as the (future) Duke of Clarence in 1782.

However, the Duke of Clarence and Wilberforce could not have debated in the House of Commons in 1782, or ever, because the Duke sat in the House of Lords, which he didn't join until he received his dukedom in 1789 or 1790. Another small detail: in 1782 then-Prince William, the future Duke of Clarence, was only 17; Toby Jones, the actor who plays him, was 40 at the time of filming.

Prince William, later Duke of Clarence, future King William IV (detail), by Thomas Gainsborough, 1782. Image source: Royal Collection Trust RCIN 401010

Finally, Prince William could not have wagered ownership of his black coachman in a card game, because he did not have an enslaved coachman: Lord Mansfield's decision in the 1772 Somerset case was widely interpreted as banning slavery in England. As Cowper wrote in The Timepiece, Book II of The Task (1785):

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free,
They touch our country and their shackles fall.

But perhaps the most ironic error in the film occurs in the scene where Wilberforce sings the hymn "Amazing Grace," which, of course, gives the film its title. The words were written by the former slaveship captain John Newton, a friend and collaborator of the missing Cowper. But the familiar tune Wilberforce sings was not associated with Newton's words until several years after Wilberforce's death; the hymn had been sung to perhaps 20 different tunes during his lifetime.

"Amazing Grace," I. Chronicles. XLI. Faith's review and expectation. Chap. xvii. 16. 17. From Olney Hymns by the Rev. John Newton (New York, 1808), p. 38. Image source: Internet Archive

The movie is also extremely partial in its portrayal of Wilberforce, who was a rich landowner who used his position to oppose political reform and increase his own wealth. In 1815 he supported the passage of the Corn Laws, which imposed minimum prices and import tariffs on grains; higher prices on agricultural commodities benefited owners of farmland and harmed wage-laborers. As a direct result of the Corn Laws the price of staple foods such as bread and oats rose significantly and hunger became widespread. (The legislation would not be overturned until 1846, the second year of a devastating famine in Ireland.)

In 1819 workers held a mass rally in Manchester's St. Peter's Field calling for universal manhood suffrage. Their ultimate aim was to ensure that their voices would be represented in Parliament and the Corn Laws repealed. The unarmed crowd was attacked by cavalry regiments that hacked at them with swords and trampled them with their horses. More than a dozen people, including women and a two-year-old child, were killed. The event came to be known as Peterloo, a reference to the mass slaughter on the fields of Waterloo.

Peterloo Massacre, Manchester, print published by Richard Carlile, 1819. Image credit: Manchester Libraries. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

In the aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre, Wilberforce supported the repressive Six Acts that restricted or suspended civil liberties. Wilberforce may have been a passionate advocate for the end of the trade in slaves, but once the formerly enslaved joined the ranks of wage-laborers they would be free to starve along with their fellow workers.

In 1833, on his deathbed, Wilberforce was informed that a bill to abolish slavery in Britain and its colonies was sure to pass in Parliament. "Thank God," he is reported to have said, "that I should have lived to witness a day in which England is willing to give twenty millions sterling for the abolition of alavery." It should be noted, though, that the £20 million he referred to was not given as reparations to emancipated slaves descended from generations of men, women and children who had been kidnapped or born into bondage, and whose grueling labor had been compelled by force for the benefit of their masters. Instead, it was given to slave owners as compensation for the loss of their property. Also, abolition did not take full effect until 1840; even then, exceptions were made for India, Ceylon, and the island of Saint Helena off the west coast of Africa.

These moral compromises may have been thought to be politically necessary for passage of the Slavery Abolition Act. However, as historian Eric Williams has argued, slavery and the plantation economy it supported were becoming less profitable by the decade. It's hard not to see this action as self-dealing by those who held power and derived much of their wealth, directly or indirectly, from slavery.

Amazing Grace ignores such contradictions and offers in their place a simplified view of Wilberforce's character and actions. Perhaps only someone such as Ken Loach or Mike Leigh (writer and director of Peterloo (2018)) could do greater justice to the complexity of the movement for abolition and the failings, inconsistencies, and conflicts, as well as the courage and rectitude, of those who ultimately brought an end to British slavery.