Beliefs Lead to Martyrdom

Kara Guzzo
Sonshine Academy, Rockford

"It will never shrink from the post of duty; nor fear to speak out lest some over sensitive ears should be pained. Opinions honestly held will be fearlessly declared." This was Elijah Lovejoy's opening editorial of the St. Louis Observer. Lovejoy stood behind these words, ones for which he would eventually die.

Elijah P. Lovejoy started his career in 1836 as a teacher in China, Maine. After only one year of teaching, he felt it was time to move on. He walked to Illinois where he found that his only way to make a living was to teach. He started his own school and taught for two years, leaving it to become co-editor of the St. Louis Times. T. J. Miller was editor at the time but, having financial problems, sold half interest of the Times to Lovejoy.

Lovejoy's rival paper was the St. Louis Beacon. The Beacon and the Times held opposing views and often found it convenient to degrade each other in their editorials. Although Lovejoy and his fellow writers were anti-Jackson (one of the strong leaders of the Southern states), in the beginning Lovejoy held no strong abolitionist views.

Lovejoy started attending revival services in 1832; he converted to Christianity as a result of these meetings. He left the newspaper business to attend Princeton Seminary. He believed that a Christian should be involved in the ministry. Soon after his thirteen months of training were finished, a few businessmen requested that he come back to St. Louis and help start a newspaper. This newspaper was to promote good morals, and they felt they needed someone who was in the ministry but was also qualified to run a newspaper business. So, once again, Lovejoy was on the move and returned to St. Louis to start the Observer.

Lovejoy arrived on November 7, 1833, expecting to stay for a year or so while continuing to preach at local churches. But the local churches did not like his style of preaching, and he began to give his time fully to the newspaper. The first issue of the Observer was published on November 22. The headlines read "Jesus Christ and Him Crucified." Lovejoy wrote in that issue that the newspaper would uphold "a system of religious doctrines to which it will inflexibly adhere." The Observer thus began as a religious newspaper that contained a great many doctorinal articles.

After the Observer had been in business for a year, it began to fall deep in debt. Lovejoy wrote to Reverend John Brooks of Belleville, Illinois, asking for help:

The object of this letter is to inquire if you can do anything to help along the Observer. It is now sinking money at the rate of $30.00 a week. Unless a united effort is made on the part of those who feel an interest in its success, it can not go on . . . can you do something? Will you try?

The letter he sent had some effect and the Observer was once again in business. Lovejoy gradually brought the issue of slavery into his paper. He began to take a firmer and firmer stand against it. On July 21, 1834, he wrote: "Slavery as it now exists among us must cease to exist." In 1835 he learned that people were planning to destroy his press and attack him. Mobs would form while Lovejoy was away on business and attempt to attack him on his way back. But he always made a close escape, and eventually the owners of the press threatened gunfire against anyone who attacked. On October 5, 1835, Lovejoy received a letter that included the following: The undersigned, friends and supporters of the Observer, beg leave to suggest that the present temper of the Times requires a change in the matter of conducting that print in relation to the subject of domestic slavery . . . Although we do not claim the right to prescribe

Owen Lovejoy devoted his life to the abolition cause, and he was murdered by a mob for his beliefs.

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your course as an editor, we hope that the concurring opinions of so many persons having the interests of your paper and religion both at heart, may induce you to distrust your own judgement, and so far change the character of the Observer, as to pass over in silence everything connected with the subject of slavery . . ."

Nine men signed the letter.

When Lovejoy ignored this letter, a mob formed intending to show him that they meant business. After a first press was destroyed, the people of Gatesburg sent him fifty dollars for a new one. However, no one would ever be able to pay for the continual persecution that Lovejoy suffered the last two years of his life.

Lovejoy kept writing his views on slavery and was eventually forced to move from St. Louis to Alton, Illinois, in 1837. There he assumed people would more readily accept his views. Lovejoy soon found out, however, that as long as he was in what was considered the Southern United States, neither he nor his views would be accepted. Shortly after Lovejoy moved, he wrote a response to the letter he had received two years earlier: I did not yield to the wishes here expressed, and in consequence have been persecuted ever since. But I have kept a good conscience in the matter, and that repays me for all I have suffered, or can suffer. I have sworn eternal opposition to slavery, and by the blessing of God will never go back. E. P. L. October 24, 1837. Lovejoy did stand against slavery, and for as long as he lived he never backed away from this belief. He was martyred on November 7, 1837, while trying to defend his fourth printing press. A mob gathered outside the building demanding the press. Lovejoy refused. The mob continued yelling, insisting that he give up his press. When Lovejoy refused a final time, the mob set fire to the building. Lovejoy then came outside the building with a gun and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to set a fire. However, the mob was quicker, and Elijah P. Lovejoy was shot down before two hundred onlookers. Elijah P. Lovejoy's murder was viewed differently by different people. Some mourned, some rejoiced, and some did not care. Some proclaimed that he was the first abolitionist to be martyred and credited him for taking a stand when no one else would. Some condemned him for even raising a gun, saying that he should have trusted God for his safety.—[From Merton L. Dillon, Elijah P. Lovejoy; Lawrence J. Freidman, Gregarious Saints; Owen and Joseph C. Lovejoy, Memoir of the Reverend Elijah P. LoveJoy; Hermann R. Muelder, Fighters for Freedom; Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists; Paul Simon, Freedom's Champion; Henry Tanner, Life of Elijah P. Lovejoy.] Lovejoy was buried in Alton; this monument marks the grave of the martyred abolitionist.

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