When was elijah lovejoy born

As a teenager, he attended Waterville College what is now Colby College and did exceptionally well. After college, Lovejoy moved to St. Louis, Missouri, a location fractured by slavery. Here he operated a school designed to emulate teaching styles in the East. However, once local editors started including his works in the papers, he began to stop teaching a turn towards a life of journalism.

For about five years Lovejoy worked at the St. Louis Times and later became an editor of the St. Louis Observer. Afterwards, he would turn back towards religion and attend Princeton Divinity School to become a Presbyterian preacher.

After divinity school, Lovejoy returned to St. Louis Observer, where he advocated the abolition of slavery. In , Lovejoy published a full account of the lynching of a Black in St. Louis and the subsequent trial that acquitted the mob leaders.

This critical report angered some local whites and his press was destroyed by a white mob. Unable to publish his newspaper in St. He also began editing the Alton Observer and continued to advocate the end of slavery. Lovejoy wrote in his paper:. Shots were fired and Lovejoy fell dead. Lovejoy became a hero. Abolitionists held angry meetings throughout the nation to denounce his killing. Thousands of men and women were inspired to join the anti-slavery cause. As a result of his death, Northern antagonism to abolition diminished, and anti-slavery forces enjoyed a more permissive atmosphere in which to meet, speak, publish, and agitate.

This article was originally published in Caryn E. She earned a Ph. Neumann is a former editor of the Federal History Journal and has published on Black and women's history. Dillon, Merton L. Elijah P. Lovejoy, Abolitionist Editor. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, Simon, Paul.

Wicker, Molly.