This is an IHeart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports and from business to history and everything in between, including your stories. Send them

to our American Stories.com. They're some of our favorites. Slavery to this day remains one of the

ugliest blots in the long history of humanity. It can be traced back as early as 4,000 BC.

The man who perhaps more than any other stirred the conscience of the world about this evil

was William Wilberforce.

His efforts help bring liberty to untold millions, and his persistence and conviction

influenced major change in thinking and the history of the world, too.

Eric Metaxis is the New York Times best-selling author of Bonhofer, Martin Luther, and Amazing Grace.

His biography, Amazing Grace, William Wilberforce, and the heroic campaign to end slavery,

was the official companion book to the feature film also titled Amazing Grace.

We'd like to thank Eric Patakis for allowing us to share his

story with our listeners. Here's Eric with a remarkable story of William Wilberforce.

The story of Wilberforce is kind of funny because once you know the story, you're embarrassed

you didn't know it before, and that happens to me over and over with the characters I write about,

that you think, this is so important.

How have I lived this long, and I've missed this, because this is so important.

Let's put it this way.

He's most famous, if you have heard anything about him.

He is the man who, in Parliament in 1807, had the victory over the slave trade in the British Empire.

Now, a lot of people, you know, kind of like, what's that?

What's the slave trade and slavery or whatever?

...