Edited sentence: A few days afterward, William and Barbara marry; and William, with a renewed hope for success, picks up the fight where he had previously left off, aided by Thornton, Clarkson and James Stephen.Although he at first resists, she convinces him to tell her about his life.Barbara convinces him to keep fighting because if he does not, no one else is capable of doing so.Beginning as an ambitious and popular Member of Parliament (MP), William was persuaded by his friends William Pitt, Thomas Clarkson, Hannah More and others to take on the dangerous issue of the British slave trade which led him to become highly unpopular in the House of Commons amongst the Members of Parliament representing vested interests of the trade in the cities of London, Bristol, and Liverpool.Exhausted, and frustrated that he was unable to change anything in the government, William becomes physically ill (in the film he is depicted as suffering from chronic colitis), which brings the story back to the present day.Having virtually given up hope, William considers leaving politics forever.In time, after many attempts to bring legislation forward over twenty years, he is eventually responsible for a bill being passed through Parliament in 1807, which abolishes the slave trade in the British empire forever.It is here that he is introduced to his future wife, Barbara Spooner.It should be noted that the film stops short of showing the continued fight for abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire, which concluded in August 1833, weeks after Wilberforce's death, when both houses of Parliament voted to outlaw slavery in the following year.The film begins with Wilberforce severely ill and taking a holiday in Bath, Somerset, with his cousin, Henry Thornton.The story flashes back 15 years to 1782, and William recounts the events that led him to where he is now.Though Wilberforce did not live to see slavery actually abolished, he was informed days before his death that final passing of the bill was assured