Emancipation of enslaved Africans Wilberforce worked with the members of the African Institution to ensure the enforcement of the abolition of the slave trade and to promote abolitionist negotiations with other countries. In particular, the United States had abolished the slave trade after 1808 and Wilberforce lobbied the American government to enforce its own mandated prohibition more strongly. The same year, Wilberforce moved his family from Clapham to a sizeable mansion with a large garden in Kensington Gore, closer to the Houses of Parliament. In worsening health by 1812, Wilberforce resigned his Yorkshire seat, and became MP for the rotten borough of Bramber in Sussex, a seat with little or no constituency obligations, thus allowing him more time for his family and the causes that interested him. From 1816, Wilberforce introduced a series of bills which would require the compulsory registration of enslaved people, together with details of their country of origin, permitting the illegal importation of foreign slaves to be detected. Later in the same year he began to publicly denounce slavery itself, though he did not demand immediate emancipation, believing incremental change to be more effective in achieving abolition.
Emancipation of enslaved Africans Wilberforce worked with the members of the African Institution to ensure the enforcement of the abolition of the slave trade and to promote abolitionist negotiations with other countries. In particular the United States had abolished the slave trade after 1808 and Wilberforce lobbied the American government to enforce its own mandated prohibition more strongly. The same year, Wilberforce moved his family from Clapham to a sizeable mansion with a large garden in Kensington Gore, closer to the Houses of Parliament. In worsening health by 1812, Wilberforce resigned his Yorkshire seat, and became MP for the rotten borough of Bramber in Sussex, a seat with little or no constituency obligations, thus allowing him more time for his family and the causes that interested him. From 1816, Wilberforce introduced a series of bills which would require the compulsory registration of enslaved people, together with details of their country of origin, permitting the illegal importation of foreign slaves to be detected. Later in the same year he began to publicly denounce slavery itself, though he did not demand immediate emancipation believing incremental change to be more effective in achieving abolition