Objection · No. 14 · Historical
A pro-life incrementalist argument, and one we are often asked to answer. Below: the steel-manned version of the claim, the abolitionist response, discussion questions, and the sources behind both.
Historical Defensive · responds to an objection
Wilberforce's campaign did span decades and did see partial measures (like the 1788 regulation act) pass along the way; he even co-founded a society in 1823 whose name included 'gradual abolition' of colonial slavery. Change historically comes in stages, and honoring that is realism, not compromise.
Steel-manned in our own words from the strongest public versions of this claim.
Abolitionists answer that taking time is not the same as incrementalism. Wilberforce filed bills for total abolition of the slave trade year after year; the length of the campaign reflects how long it took to win the votes for total abolition, not a strategy of legalizing a 'lesser' slave trade. Wilberforce himself feared the 1788 regulation act would entrench the trade as merely needing adjustment, and in his 1807 Letter he blamed 'gradual instead of immediate abolition' for prolonging the trade, calling gradualists in effect its 'most efficient supporters.' The honest complication (his 1823 'gradual abolition' society for colonial slavery) should be acknowledged — but on the slave trade, the specific parallel pro-lifers invoke, Wilberforce was an immediatist who condemned the gradualist substitute.