Background
Elijah Parish Lovejoy was born at Albion, Maine, United States on November 9, 1802; the son of a Presbyterian minister.
Elijah Parish Lovejoy was born at Albion, Maine, United States on November 9, 1802; the son of a Presbyterian minister.
He was graduated from Waterville (now Colby) College in Maine in 1828 and went to St. Louis, Missouri, where he taught school until in 1829 he became editor of a Whig paper.
Graduated from the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1833 as an ordained Presbyterian minister, Lovejoy returned to St. Louis in 1833 and founded the St. Louis Observer, which he enlisted in the Presbyterian war against slavery, intemperance, and "popery. "
On receiving his license to preach he returned to St. Louis to edit a Presbyterian weekly, the Observer.
His editorials on slavery soon brought protests from his readers, for even the gradual abolition of slavery that Lovejoy proposed was controversial.
A meeting of citizens in 1835 warned him to desist, but Lovejoy refused to modify his position.
In early 1836 Lovejoy published a full account of the brutal lynching of a free African American in St. Louis, including a report of the trial that acquitted the mob leaders.
Threats of personal harm and lack of support by the Presbyterian General Assembly soon led him to move to Alton, Illinois, 25 miles away.
When the Observer's press, left unguarded on the Alton dock, was smashed and thrown into the Mississippi River, local citizens pledged money for a new one.
His press was destroyed again in 1837.
His third press was thrown into the river.
At the request of Alton's mayor the Observer's fourth press was placed in a warehouse for safekeeping.
Lovejoy's friends gathered about 50 armed men to guard it.
On the evening of November 7 some 20 or 30 local citizens surrounded the warehouse.
There was more firing from bothsides, and when several defenders rushed out to extinguish a fire on the roof, Lovejoy, standing in an open doorway, fell with five bullets in his body.
Quotations: "We distinctly avow it to be our settled purpose, never, while life lasts, to yield to this new system of attempting to destroy, by means of mob violence, the right of conscience, the freedom of opinion, and of the press. "
On March 4, 1835, he married Celia Ann French.
