Abolitionist Editor Elijah Lovejoy Murdered by Pro-Slavery Mob; No Prosecutions Follow

Presbyterian minister and abolitionist newspaper editor Elijah Parish Lovejoy is murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, struck by five bullets while defending his printing press from destruction. The murder of Lovejoy—whose fourth printing press had been hidden in a warehouse owned by local merchants Winthrop Sargent Gilman and Benjamin Godfrey after mobs twice dumped earlier presses into the Mississippi River—represents the violent suppression of antislavery speech and press freedom in both slave and free states. Despite the public nature of the killing and the mob’s composition of “mostly Missourians,” no one is prosecuted for the murder, and Lovejoy’s body must be buried in a secret location to prevent further desecration. The assassination galvanizes the abolitionist movement, prompts John Brown to consecrate his life to slavery’s destruction, and influences Abraham Lincoln’s political views, demonstrating how mob violence and official impunity work together to enforce the slave power’s control over public discourse.

Lovejoy’s progression from moderate reformer to martyred radical illustrates the slave power’s intolerance for any antislavery expression. Born in Maine and educated at Princeton Theological Seminary, Lovejoy moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he founded the St. Louis Observer and gradually advocated for gradual emancipation—a position that “leading citizens in St. Louis found repugnant” despite its moderation. When mob violence threatened in 1836, Lovejoy relocated his newspaper 25 miles upriver to Alton in free Illinois, assuming he would be safer outside a slave state. However, when his printing press arrived at Alton docks, local thugs immediately smashed it, revealing that opposition to antislavery speech transcended the slave/free state boundary. Local citizens raised money for a replacement press, and Lovejoy published successfully for another year until printing a July 4, 1837 call for forming a state auxiliary to the American Anti-Slavery Society, which “kindled community anger.”

The November 6-7 attack follows a pattern of escalating violence against Lovejoy’s presses and person. After mobs twice more dumped his presses into the river—each time replaced by the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society—Lovejoy acquired a fourth press and hid it in Gilman and Godfrey’s warehouse. On the evening of November 6, a mob said to be composed mostly of Missouri residents attacked the building. According to the Alton Observer, the mob fired shots into the warehouse, and when Lovejoy and his defenders returned fire, they hit several people including a man named Bishop, who died. After the attacking party apparently withdrew, Lovejoy opened the warehouse door and was “instantly struck by five bullets, dying in a few minutes.” The killing of an unarmed man defending his constitutional rights to free speech and press freedom in a free state demonstrates the reach of slave power violence beyond formal slave jurisdictions.

The murder’s impact reverberates throughout the abolitionist movement and American political development. John Quincy Adams declares the event gave “a shock as of an earthquake throughout this country,” while the Boston Recorder writes it “called forth from every part of the land ‘a burst of indignation which has not had its parallel in this country since the Battle of Lexington.’” John Brown publicly consecrates his life to slavery’s destruction upon learning of the murder. Throughout the North and West, membership in antislavery societies increases sharply. Abraham Lincoln later writes to a friend that “Lovejoy’s tragic death for freedom in every sense marked his sad ending as the most important single event that ever happened in the new world,” suggesting the murder shaped Lincoln’s views on slavery and constitutional governance. The complete absence of prosecutions—nobody faces charges in the weeks following the killing—exemplifies the impunity afforded to anti-abolitionist violence and the complicity of legal authorities in suppressing antislavery activism.

The Lovejoy assassination demonstrates kakistocracy through the convergence of mob violence, press suppression, and official complicity to enforce the slave power’s control over public discourse. Authorities in both Missouri and Illinois tolerate repeated destruction of Lovejoy’s property and ultimately his murder, reflecting how slavery’s economic and political power extends into free states to suppress dissent. The failure to prosecute anyone for a public murder illustrates the collapse of rule of law when maintaining slavery requires silencing opposition. The Lovejoy Monument erected in Alton in 1897 commemorates a martyr to both abolition and press freedom, while the 60-year gap between his murder and official recognition reveals the long shadow of slave power’s violent suppression of constitutional rights.