Elijah P. Lovejoy

Friend of the fugitive and martyr to the anti-slavery cause Elijah Parish Lovejoy was born in Albion, Maine, on November 9, 1802. In 1831, Lovejoy studied at Princeton Theological Seminary, was ordained by the Presbytery of St. Louis in 1834 and was elected its Moderator in 1835. Returning to St. Louis, published a religious newspaper, The St. Louis Observer, and began to advocate the abolition of slavery vocally and visibly—in a slave state.

After witnessing an enslaved African American, Francis J. McIntosh, begin burned at the site, his strident and uncompromising editorials aroused great anger. Soon thereafter, his printing press was destroyed by a mob in July 1836. Lovejoy then moved to Alton, Illinois, became the Stated Clerk of the Presbytery in 1837 and the first pastor of the College Avenue Presbyterian Church. He continued his anti-slavery work, founded another new outlet, The Alton Observer, and helped with the organization of the Anti-Slavery Society of Illinois. His views and his conduct, again, provoked anger and outrage—and his neighbors destroyed three more printing presses in succession, casting them into the Mississippi River. Still, Lovejoy continued his crusade.

On November 7, 1837, while attempting to defend and install yet another printing press, Lovejoy was killed by a blast from a double-barreled shotgun in a struggle with a pro-slavery mob. Lovejoy became a martyr, eulogized by men of the stature of Wendell Phillips, and many consider his death “the firs, but unrecorded, battle of the Civil War.” He was buried on his thirty-fifth birthday, November 9, 1837.