Elijah Parish Lovejoy was a white preacher with a printing press and a dangerous habit, telling the truth about slavery. In 1837, a mob stormed the warehouse where he kept his press. He stood his ground, they shot him dead. That night, he became the first white man to die for the fight against slavery in America.
Born on November 9, 1802, in Albion, Maine, Elijah Lovejoy was the eldest of nine children in a deeply religious family. His father, a Congregational preacher, named him after Elijah Parish, a mentor and politically engaged minister. Elijah’s early education was steeped in Christian values, classical learning, and a fierce commitment to moral uprightness.
After graduating from Waterville College (now Colby College), and Princeton Theological Seminary, Lovejoy was ordained in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1834. In Missouri, he began to denounce slavery from his pulpit and in his newspaper, the St. Louis Observer.
His editorials denounced slaveholders and argued that true Christianity could not coexist with the bondage of human beings. He implored Christian slaveholders to confront the hypocrisy of their faith, writing:
“Slavery, as it exists among us … is demonstrably an evil. In every community where it exists, it presses like a nightmare on the body politic… like the vampire, it slowly and imperceptibly sucks away the life-blood of society.”
These views annoyed slaveholders and pro-slavery sympathizers, who viewed him as a dangerous radical threatening the social and economic order.
As tensions rose, mobs attacked his printing press multiple times, smashing equipment and burning papers. But Lovejoy refused to retreat into silence.
His uncompromising stance earned him both admiration and deep hostility. Pro-slavery readers accused him of inciting unrest. Mobs threatened to destroy his press. But Lovejoy refused to be silent.
In April 1836, tensions exploded when Francis McIntosh, a free Black man, was lynched by a mob in St. Louis after fatally stabbing a police officer in self-defense. Lovejoy condemned the lynching in the Observer, provoking powerful backlash. Lovejoy’s life was now in danger.
Soon after, his press was vandalized, and he was forced out of Missouri. Lovejoy crossed the Mississippi River into Alton, Illinois, a free state, but not necessarily a safe one. Alton, tied economically to Missouri, had pro-slavery sympathizers who viewed Lovejoy’s presence as a threat.
In Alton, Lovejoy founded the Alton Observer, continuing his abolitionist advocacy. His printing press was destroyed repeatedly by mobs. Each time, Lovejoy replaced it. By this time, he fully identified as an abolitionist, aligning with other abolitionists in the area. He called for a state antislavery convention and refused to back down despite threats.
On November 2, 1837, he delivered a bold speech:
“As long as I am an American citizen, and as long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write and to publish whatever I please…”
Five days later, on November 7, pro-slavery men attacked a warehouse owned by Winthrop Gilman, where Lovejoy had hidden his fourth printing press. Lovejoy and his supporters defended the building. During the assault, Lovejoy was shot five times and died instantly. He was 34 years old.
The mob tossed the press out the window and into the Mississippi River. The Alton Observer never published again.
Lovejoy’s murder horrified many in the North. Abolitionists seized on his death as proof of the violent lengths to which pro-slavery forces would go to silence anyone who spoke out against them. Former President John Quincy Adams, now an outspoken anti-slavery congressman, thundered in Congress that Lovejoy’s death was “a death of freedom of the press.”
Frederick Douglass, the formerly enslaved abolitionist leader, later praised Lovejoy as a man who died at his post, refusing to abandon his duty. Lovejoy’s sacrifice, he believed, spoke louder than any speech, and proved that some white Americans were willing to risk their lives for Black freedom.
Lovejoy’s martyrdom inspired a surge in abolitionist activism. Antislavery societies multiplied. His younger brother, Owen Lovejoy, became a leading abolitionist congressman. In 1838, the Anti-Slavery Society published Memoir of the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, a powerful book co-written by his brothers Owen and Joseph.
His grave in Alton was left unmarked for years to prevent desecration. In 1864, journalist Thomas Dimmock relocated the remains and marked the spot with the Latin epitaph, “Hic jacet Lovejoy. Jam parce sepulto.” (“Here lies Lovejoy. Now spare his grave.”).
Sources:
https://www.nationalabolitionhalloffameandmuseum.org/elijah-parish-lovejoy.html
https://stlouiswalkoffame.org/elijah-lovejoy/
https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/exhibits/ahd/slaverydebate2.html
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