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The 1836–1838 campaign to end free speech in Alton, Illinois culminated on November 7, 1837 with the mob murder of abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Founder/ Editor of The Alton Observer. Timeline:

• April 28, 1836 – lynching of Francis McIntosh in St. Louis, Missouri, a free black man, who had committed no crime. He was attacked by an angry mob, chained to a locust tree and burned alive without a trial.
• May, 1836 – Elijah Parish Lovejoy, after condemning the failure to prosecute the murderers of Francis McIntosh, experienced harassment and two break-ins. He was forced to move his newspaper, the St. Louis Observer, across the Mississippi River, where it became the Alton Observer.
• November 7, 1837 – Elijah Parish Lovejoy was murdered in Alton, Illinois. Lovejoy’s murder was covered in newspapers nationwide, leading to a rise in membership in abolitionist societies. By 1840 more than 15,000 people were members of abolitionist societies in the United States.
• January 27, 1838 – Twenty-eight year old Abraham Lincoln delivered his first major address at the Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, just north of Alton, launching his twenty year path to become Illinois Senator and later US President.

Jon Meacham in his book And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle notes that Elijah Parish Lovejoy was murdered on November 7, 1837 after he helped William Lloyd Garrison found an Illinois chapter of Garrison’s Anti-Slavery Society.

Alton Events and the Launch of Abraham Lincoln’s Political Career

On January 27, 1838 Abraham Lincoln, then twenty-eight years old, delivered his first major speech at the Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois after the murder of Elijah Parish Lovejoy in Alton, deploring the lynching of Francis McIntosh and events that followed. Lincoln warned that no trans-Atlantic military giant could ever crush us as a nation, “If downfall ever comes to America,” he said, “we ourselves would be its author and finisher.”

Paul Simon, Congressman and Senator from Illinois, wrote books on both Abraham Lincoln and Elijah Parish Lovejoy. In his Essay on Lincoln’s Lyceum Speech, Simon noted that Lincoln addressed the mob murder of Lovejoy by creating a context in which the murder was implied, but Lincoln avoided direct reference to this “too dangerous to mention” crime.

Zann Gill in ALTON – campaign to end free speech: Two murders that provoked Lincoln to run for President describes how this 1836–7 pre-Civil War scandal started in St. Louis, Missouri and followed Lovejoy across the Mississippi to flare up in Alton, Illinois.

ALTON recounts how two murders set off a chain reaction that provoked Abraham Lincoln to run for President. First, an innocent black man, Francis McIntosh, was burnt alive in St. Louis, Missouri (April 28, 1836). The brutal murder of Francis McIntosh, and its dismissal in court, transformed Elijah Parish Lovejoy from a moderate white newspaper editor into an abolitionist. For speaking out against burning a black man alive, Elijah Parish Lovejoy was forced to leave St. Louis, Missouri, a slave state. He moved across the river to Alton, Illinois (a free state), taking his newspaper, The St. Louis Observer, with him to Alton where it became The Alton Observer. But the free state of Illinois was not a safe harbor for escaped slaves, nor for an abolitionist editor who sought to preserve his right to free speech by leaving Missouri, a slave state. Lovejoy was pursued and murdered the following year (November 7, 1837) by a mob of white men in formal evening dress – top hats and swallowtail coats. Soon after, Abraham Lincoln delivered his first major public speech at the Lyceum (hence known as his Lyceum Speech) in Springfield, Illinois, just north of Alton, starting his twenty-year path toward the Presidency.

Alton after World War II (1950s)

Adlai E. Stevenson, twice Democratic candidate for President of the United States against Dwight D. Eisenhower, said in his dedication of the Lovejoy Memorial in Alton on November 9, 1952, the 115th anniversary of Lovejoy’s burial, “I believe that community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, . . . where denunciation without specification or backing takes the place of evidence. . . . There is a common heresy, and its graves are to be found all over the earth. It is the heresy that says you can kill an idea by killing a man, defeat a principle by defeating a person, bury truth by burying its vehicle. Man may burn his brother at the stake, but he cannot reduce truth to ashes; he may murder his fellow man with a shot in the back, but he does not murder justice; he may even slay armies of men, but as it is written, ‘truth beareth off the victory.’”

In 1952, the year of the Lovejoy Memorial dedication, Elijah Parish Lovejoy's alma mater, Colby College, established the Lovejoy Award, which annually celebrates the courage of journalists who have risked their lives to expose stories and stood up for freedom of speech.

John Glanville Gill served as minister of the Alton Unitarian Church while completing research for his Harvard University Ph.D. thesis on Elijah Parish Lovejoy. Like his subject, who was transformed from a neutral newspaper man ready to “hear both sides” into an abolitionist, Gill was also transformed by his experience in Alton from an academic into a civil rights activist. After organizing a consortium of ministers to protect black schoolchildren enrolling in public schools, Ku Klux Klan burnings occurred that frightened Alton residents. Gill was removed from his role as Minister of the Alton Unitarian Church and forced to leave Alton. Though these events were a civil rights controversy, they were treated as religious controversy as reported in Time Magazine.

Alton and the Attack on the Capitol (January 6, 2021)

Congressman Jamie Raskin drew an analogy to the events of 1836–8 in his Testimony for the Seventh Hearing of the House Panel investigating the January 6 United States Capitol Attack in 2021. Congressman Jamie Raskin connected the mob murder in Alton to the Attack on the Capitol: We almost saw “our constitutional republic, as we know it, toppled on January 6th. . . Politicians whipping up mob violence to destroy fair elections is the oldest domestic enemy of constitutional democracy in America. . . In 1837 a racist mob in Alton, Illinois broke into the offices of an abolitionist newspaper and killed its editor, Elijah Lovejoy."