 Some of the group, Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, were responsible for the founding in 1787 of Sierra Leone as a settlement for some of the African-Americans freed by the British during the American Revolutionary war; it thus became the first major British colony in Africa, whose purpose in Clarkson's words was "the abolition of the slave trade, the civilisation of Africa, and the introduction of the gospel there".Later, in 1792, another of the group John Clarkson was instrumental in the creation of its capital Freetown.The group are described by the historian Stephen Tomkins as "a network of friends and families in England, with William Wilberforce as its centre of gravity, who were powerfully bound together by their shared moral and spiritual values, by their religious mission and social activism, by their love for each other, and by marriage".