In Alton, Illinois, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy is shot dead by a mob while attempting to protect his printing shop from being destroyed a third time.
Elijah Parish Lovejoy (November 9, 1802 November 7, 1837) was an American Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor, and abolitionist. Following his murder by a mob, he became a martyr to the abolitionist cause opposing slavery in the United States. He was also hailed as a defender of free speech and freedom of the press.Lovejoy was born in New England and graduated from what is today Colby College. Unsatisfied with a teaching career, he was drawn to journalism and decided to 'go west'. In 1827, he reached St. Louis, Missouri. Due to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Missouri had entered the United States as a slave state. Lovejoy edited a newspaper but returned east for a time to study for the ministry at Princeton University. On his return to St. Louis, he founded the St. Louis Observer, in which he became increasingly more critical of slavery and the powerful interests protecting slavery. Facing threats and violent attacks, Lovejoy decided to move across the river to Alton in Illinois, a free state. But Alton was also tied to the Mississippi River economy, easily reachable by anti-Lovejoy Missourians, and was badly split over pro- and anti- abolitionist views.
In Alton, Lovejoy was fatally shot during an attack by a proslavery mob. The mob was seeking to destroy a warehouse owned by Winthrop Sargent Gilman and Benjamin Godfrey, which held Lovejoy's printing press and abolitionist materials. According to John Quincy Adams, the murder "[gave] a shock as of an earthquake throughout this country." The Boston Recorder wrote that "these events called forth from every part of the land 'a burst of indignation which has not had its parallel in this country since the Battle of Lexington.'" When informed about the murder, John Brown said publicly: "Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery." Lovejoy is often seen as a martyr to the abolitionist cause and to a free press, and the Lovejoy Monument was erected in Alton in 1897.
Alton (US: AWL-tən) is a city on the Mississippi River in Madison County, Illinois, United States, about 18 miles (29 km) north of St. Louis, Missouri. The population was 25,676 at the 2020 census. It is a part of the Metro-East region of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area. It is famous for its limestone bluffs along the river north of the city, for its role preceding and during the American Civil War. It was the site of the last Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debate in October 1858. The former state penitentiary in Alton was used during the Civil War to hold up to 12,000 Confederate prisoners of war.