Elijah Lovejoy
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Elijah Lovejoy was an editor of the Alton Observer, and anti-slavery newspaper located along the Mississippi River in Alton, Illinois.
On Nov. 7, 1837, a pro-slavery mob crossed the river from Missouri, where slavery was legal, and murdered Lovejoy. Then they threw the printing press of his newspaper into the river. Decades later it was recovered and displayed by the Alton Telegraph, the newspaper that published about the murder and has remained in existence until this day.
| “ | Mobs had destroyed Lovejoy’s presses on a number of occasions, but when a new press arrived in November 1837, the violence escalated. No sooner was the new press offloaded from the steamboat Missouri Fulton than a drunken mob formed and tried to set fire to the warehouse where it was stored. When Lovejoy ran out to push away a would-be-arsonist, he was shot [and killed].[1] | ” |
He was the brother of the Radical Republican Owen Lovejoy.