By William and Jane Ann Moore

Elijah Parrish Lovejoy, the editor of a religious antislavery newspaper, the Alton Observer, was murdered by an angry pro-slavery mob on November 7, 1837. Owen Glendower Lovejoy, nine years younger, knelt beside the perforated body of his brother, Elijah, and vowed never to forsake the cause for which his brother's blood was sprinkled. Elijah became the famous martyr for the liberty of the press. Owen became a major antislavery leader in Congress.

The woman behind these men was their mother Elizabeth Pattee Lovejoy, known as Betsey. In profound ways she nurtured and prepared her children before the murder; then she supported and empowered her remaining children to overcome their grief and anger at such reckless violence with the help of friends and churches in western Illinois.

On August 24, 1832, Elijah referred to his mother as a "wonderful woman" in a letter that he penned to his sister, Sibyl. He continued to praise his mother by saying, "I have never seen her equal, take all her qualities together. So pure, so disinterestedly benevolent a heart seldom lodges in a house of clay, and never save in the bosom of a mother."

Twice a day the Lovejoy family knelt before the stone hearth in the Lovejoy ancestral farm on a sloping hill in central Maine. There they addressed the "Throne of Grace" asking for the blessings of faith, right living, and wisdom. When her second child, Daniel, died of alcoholism as a young man in New York, Betsey wrote to her son, Owen, then studying at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. She advised him "to love and fear God all the day long, for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and he is the wisest of our race that learns to serve him."

In the fall of 1836, with mother's blessings, Owen and his sister, Elizabeth, joined Elijah, his wife, Celia, and their little boy, Edward, in Alton. Their youngest brother, John, had already arrived and was engaged in printing. The four siblings, wife and child all shared a little house on Second and Cherry streets. They took in Joseph Rieger, a young German minister, as a paying boarder. He became a close friend of Owen's. Together they studied regularly with Rev. James DePui, the new, young Episcopal minister in Alton. All three supported Elijah in his struggle as threats grew over his publishing of antislavery articles.

Betsey and Elijah did not always share the same antislavery positions. Earlier, when Betsey, a strong supporter of avid abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, challenged Elijah's weak position against slavery, he responded sharply. On April 1, 1833, he exclaimed, "I am sorry that a woman ... of your good sense should be influenced by such an unprincipled fanatic as Garrison. I suppose ... he is an incendiary fanatic ... a weak sick-brained and wicked disturber of the public peace." However, within several years, the gap closed between mother and son on the slavery issue.

"Are you yet alive?"
The state legislature in January 1837, reflecting popular opinion, passed a resolution disapproving

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Hearthstone and plaque from the Lovejoy home in Albion, Maine. The plaque reads: "This stone from the foundation of the hearth in the birthplace and home in Albion, Maine, of Elijah Parish Lovejoy of the class of 1826 was given to Colby College on June 21, 1921, by the class of 1921."

"the formation of abolition societies." Undaunted, Elijah and Owen, using the pages of the Observer along with the aid of religious leaders in Jacksonville, Quincy, Alton, and other communities, called for the formation of the Illinois State Antislavery Society on October 26, 1837. Consequently, threats to his life and his press escalated.

A month earlier, in September, Betsey longed to be in Alton with her son, Elijah, wishing she could "strengthen his hand and encourage his heart, and help his dear wife bear her trials," but plans fell through. Imbued through a lifetime of prayer, Elijah wrote his mother assuring her of his newfound inner calm. This peace helped him to remain steadfast before the angry demands and the life-threatening sentiment that began to crowd his thoughts and his person.

On Friday afternoon, November 3, 1837, at a gathering in the church hall, a formal resolution was read to Elijah, "to sever his connections with the Observer and leave town." In his speech in defense of a free press he said, "But if by a compromise is meant that I should cease from doing that which duty requires of me, I cannot make it. And the reason is that I fear God more than I fear man." Four days later he was shot five times in the chest by a mob while defending his new printing press with friends in Gilman's warehouse.

When word reached Betsey she was bowed in lamentation. But three of her other children were still in Alton. She wrote in December 1837, "Are you yet alive?" Then she gave incisive advice. "Don't my dear children, harbor any revengeful feeling toward the murderers of your dear brother."

Betsey's advice released Owen from his deep sadness and anger to redirect his hostile energies to the real cause of his brother's death— the slaveholders' abuse of power. A few years later in a sermon delivered in Princeton, Illinois, Owen recounted, "When I was beside the prostrate body of my murdered brother Elijah, with fresh blood oozing from his perforated breast ... I vowed never to forsake the cause that was sprinkled with his blood." Soon after the death of his brother, Owen became furious over the false accusations against Elijah then being circulated by proslavery ministers. In response, Owen spent two months in Alton writing the major religious and anti-slavery newspapers exposing the falsehoods.

In February 1838 the American Antislavery Society welcomed Owen to New York City to edit with his brother, Joseph, the Memoir of The Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy Murdered in Defence of Liberty of the Press. It propelled Elijah into fame. John Quincy Adams wrote the introduction and called Elijah the first American martyr for freedom of the press. The Memoir gave "public testimony to the faithful instruction and pious example" of their parents, who "with great diligence trained them up in the fear of the Lord."

After publishing the Memoir, Owen immediately returned to western Illinois to continue Elijah's antislavery work and to seek ordination as an Episcopal minister at Jacksonville. When Bishop Chase informed him that as an Episcopal priest he could not preach against slavery, Owen responded that he could not accept those terms, but that he would call a family council to discern the matter. Encouraged by Edward Beecher and Julian Sturte-vant of Illinois College, Owen accepted a call a few months later to be the temporary pastor at the Congregational Church in Princeton, Illinois. He stayed for eighteen years, building his base as a pastor-politician.

In July 1839 the siblings

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received word from their mother that she was in Quincy. Sibyl marveled, "How could you take the wrong river, Mother?" It was no mistake. Instead of the Illinois River she had taken the upper Mississippi to visit her last connection with Elijah— Celia and her two small children. But sadly Celia and Elijah's baby daughter, Sarah, had died, adding to the family's grief.

In 1845 Betsey was invited by Irene B. Allan of Peoria to become the president of the State Female Antislavery Society. Betsey had already organized the active Princeton Female Antislavery Society that aided the many fugitive slaves passing through town and also mailed clothing and books to the black settlements in what was then known as Ontario Upper Canada. She replied to Mrs. Allan by stating her life-long commitment to the extinction of slavery, but claimed that at age 73 she was not able to accept the honor.

Betsey Lovejoy lived until 1857, long enough to see her son Owen become the leader of the religious, political, antislavery movement in Illinois; to see him work with others to form the Republican Party in Illinois, with such western Illinois political leaders as Lyman Trumbull of Alton, Archibald Williams of Quincy, and Paul Selby of Jacksonville; and to see Owen elected to Congress in 1856 for the first of his four terms.

In April 1832, Betsey prayed, "O that he (God) would be pleased to give us wise and good men to rule over us men that rule in the fear of God and hate covetousness." Did she feel that her prayer had been answered?

She would have been most gratified to hear Owen express her convictions when he returned to Alton and gave a campaign speech on behalf of Abraham Lincoln before 25,000 cheering people in September 1860. "Now is not the time nor the place to speak of my brother, or of the cause for which he died. Enough that he lives a dear and precious memory, in the hearts of those he left behind. As for his cause, time will vindicate that, as surely as God lives and reigns."

Reverend William Moore and Jane Anne Moore, co-directors of the Lovejoy Society in DeKalh, are co-editors of "Owen Lovejoy: His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838-64."

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