Background
Owen Lovejoy was born on January 6, 1811 at Albion, Maine, United States, the son of the Reverend Daniel and Elizabeth (Pattee) Lovejoy.
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(Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was a well-known, and well-respect...)
Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was a well-known, and well-respected Presbyterian minister, as well as a journalist and outspoken abolitionist. He was responsible for the publication of numerous pro-abolition articles, letters, news, and other printed materials. Lovejoy was so passionate and committed to championing the freedom of his fellow man that he made the ultimate sacrifice for his beliefs, when a pro-slavery mob murdered him during an attack on his warehouse in 1837. He was immediately considered a martyr of the Abolitionist movement - and rightly so - and is still remembered as a brilliant man who understood that the abhorrent practice of slavery was fundamentally wrong.
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Owen Lovejoy was born on January 6, 1811 at Albion, Maine, United States, the son of the Reverend Daniel and Elizabeth (Pattee) Lovejoy.
Owen Lovejoy attended Bowdoin College from 1830 to 1833, but did not graduate. Later he studied law and completed theological studies.
In 1836 Lovejoy moved to Alton, Illinois, to prepare for the ministry under his brother. Elijah Lovejoy had just begun active abolition propaganda and Owen speedily enlisted in the anti-slavery cause. In the growing excitement in Alton he stood steadfastly by his brother, and on the final tragic night after Elijah had been killed, Owen knelt beside his body and vowed "never to forsake the cause that had been sprinkled with his brother's blood. " Afterwards he served as minister of the Congregational church at Princeton, Illinois, for seventeen years.
He was a popular and devoted minister, but persistently kept his vow, never losing an opportunity to testify to the wrong of slavery. During the decade from 1840 to 1850 he spoke fearlessly for the cause wherever he could find a hearing, despite the Illinois state law prohibiting abolition meetings. Frequently he encountered violence, but his unflinching boldness and the memorable name he bore saved him from injury. His colleague in the Illinois agitation, Ichabod Codding, was an abler orator, but Lovejoy, more than any other man, advanced abolition sentiment in the state.
During the next decade, Lovejoy became increasingly influential; and in 1854, when the Republican organization began, he was elected to the state legislature to lead the forces of freedom. In Illinois the new party embraced antiforeign "Know-Nothings" and Germans representing the hundred thousand foreign-born in Illinois, disgruntled Democrats and their enemies--old-line Whigs, and, feared by all, the Abolitionists. Lovejoy believed that only one man in Illinois could discipline this "rag-tag and bob-tail gang" into party organization, and that man was Abraham Lincoln. He urged Lincoln to lead the new movement, but Lincoln replied that the time was not yet ripe. He even tried to force Lincoln's hand by placing his name at the head of the state central committee for the Republican party.
However, when Lincoln came to the Bloomington convention in 1856, it was Lovejoy who compelled the radicals to relinquish their abolition program and to accept Lincoln's conservative leadership. The same year Lovejoy was elected to Congress. There and in the Republican conventions at Pittsburgh and Philadelphia he was a radical leader; but in Illinois he was still Lincoln's henchman. When Lincoln stood for the Senate, Lovejoy put all his influence at his disposal. It was a dangerous gift. If Lincoln's opponents could "make Lincoln hang on Lovejoy's coat tails for Republican strength, " the semblance of a bargain with Lovejoy would "choke Lincoln to death. " Only Lovejoy's self-effacement prevented this catastrophe. Though he stumped the state in Lincoln's interest, he suffered Lincoln's repudiation of abolitionism gladly. While his contest with Douglas was lost, Lincoln thereby captured radical support, without losing his name for conservatism, for the presidential contest two years later.
In Congress Lovejoy assailed slavery and the South with a violence equaled only by Thaddeus Stevens and Sumner; but when Lincoln came to Washington, Lovejoy once more became his loyal supporter. To William Lloyd Garrison's attacks on Lincoln in 1862 he made fierce rejoinder, and to Thaddeus Stevens' proposals to treat the defeated South as a conquered province, he replied in the spirit of Lincoln's magnanimous reconstruction program. To him fell the honor of proposing the bill by which slavery in all the territories of the United States was abolished forever. He heard at last the Emancipation Proclamation, and died the next year.
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
(Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was a well-known, and well-respect...)
book
Lovejoy was a member of the Republican Party. In Congress, he supported President Lincoln’s moderate policies.
Quotes from others about the person
"My personal acquaintance with him . .. has been one of increasing respect and esteem, ending, with his life, in no less than affection on my part. . To the day of his death, it would scarcely wrong any other to say he was my most generous friend. " - Abraham Lincoln
In January 1843 Lovejoy married a widow, Eunice (Storrs) Dunham, who bore him seven children.