Subj: Nov. 7: Lovejoy and civil liberties
Date: 11/3/03 12:52:20 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent from the Internet (Details)
>November 7, 2003 marks the 166th anniversary of the murder of abolitionist
>newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois. He died a martyr to
>the struggle against slavery and for freedom of the press. It is
>especially important that we honor his memory this year, given that civil
>liberties are under such severe attack today.
Below is the text of an article I wrote about Lovejoy in 1997 to mark the
160th anniversary of his murder. Please feel free to share it with anyone
you think would find it of interest. I'd welcome comments on the article.
-- Chris Mahin
[log in to unmask]
www.lrna.org/8-topic/chris.html
>******************************************************************
> People's Tribune (Online Edition)
> Vol. 24 No. 11/ November, 1997
>
> P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654
> Email: [log in to unmask]
>
>******************************************************************
>
>THE LEGACY OF ELIJAH LOVEJOY: LET TRUTH RING OUT!
>
>By Chris Mahin
>
>Exactly 160 years ago this month, an event took place which
>shocked the conscience of America and led directly to the Civil
>War. Although it is barely mentioned in most schoolbooks, the
>murder of editor Elijah Lovejoy on November 7, 1837 is one of the
>most significant events in U.S. history. The life of this
>courageous opponent of slavery should be celebrated by all those
>who love freedom.
>
>Elijah Lovejoy might have led an uneventful life if he had been
>born in a peaceful time, but his era was anything but peaceful. He
>lived in a moment of history marked by intense conflict between
>the legislative representatives of the slave states and free
>states. This battle for control of the Union was particularly
>bitter in the Midwest. In 1828, Lovejoy began to feel the effects
>of this "irrepressible conflict" when he moved from his native
>Maine, a free state, to St. Louis (located in the slave state of
>Missouri).
>
>Lovejoy, the son of a minister, became a partner in a St. Louis
>newspaper. His early articles dealt with subjects like the evils
>of tobacco, whiskey and breaking the Sabbath. However, Lovejoy's
>priorities changed after he went to study for the ministry at
>Princeton University. There, he came under the influence of
>America's leading opponent of slavery, the impassioned Boston
>minister William Lloyd Garrison.
>
>Lovejoy returned to St. Louis in 1833 and became editor of the St.
>Louis Observer. His position was uncompromising: Slavery is sin
>and should be abolished. When the newspaper's office was destroyed
>by a mob, he was forced to flee across the Mississippi River to
>Alton, in the free state of Illinois.
>
>When Lovejoy's printing press arrived in Alton, the crate was
>tossed into the Mississippi River by a mob. Although some of
>Lovejoy's friends begged to him to refrain from discussing
>slavery, he continued his agitation. Twice more, presses used to
>print his newspaper were destroyed. Then, on the evening of
>November 7, 1837, a drunken mob of 200 people attacked the office
>of the Alton Observer. Five slugs from a double-barreled shotgun
>killed Elijah Lovejoy as he tried to protect his printing press.
>Lovejoy's assassins were freed by the local authorities.
>
>The death of this 35-year-old editor and minister set off a chain
>of events which transformed America. Former President John Quincy
>Adams called Lovejoy America's first martyr to freedom of the
>press. Lovejoy's murder convinced John Brown that slavery would
>never be abolished by peaceful means; Brown began planning how to
>counter the violence of slavery with violence.
>
>Elijah Parish Lovejoy was the kind of person who emerges when a
>society is in crisis. At such moments in history, individuals step
>forward who are capable of seeing further than the average person
>can. Fired with a sense of mission, these leaders are the first to
>feel deeply about the moral choices facing society. They sense the
>answer to a problem and fight to make others grasp it. They search
>for ways to shake the mass of people out of their complacency.
>
>Such leaders have always seized the weapons of the printed page
>and the speaker's platform and used them to win people to new
>ideas. Sometimes, these leaders pay a terrible price for their
>devotion, falling in the struggle as Elijah Lovejoy did. But their
>victory lies in the minds which ultimately get opened as a result
>of their relentless agitation. Lovejoy's heroic death helped
>people understand that slavery was wrong and that it endangered
>the freedom not only of the slave, but also of the people of the
>North and West as well.
>
>The abolitionists of the 19th century felt an obligation to
>protest the most horrific wrong of their generation. They
>understood that economic, social and political issues ultimately
>express themselves as moral choices.
>
>Today, this country once again finds itself in the midst of
>economic dislocation and social strife. Just as in the pre-Civil
>War era, these issues come down to moral choices.
>
>In Lovejoy's time, the 10,000 families which controlled the
>largest Southern plantations (and owned most of the slaves in the
>United States) completely dominated the political life of this
>country. That handful of people, a tiny percent of the 30 million
>human beings then residing in the United States, were prepared to
>do anything necessary to maintain their political control. (They
>certainly showed that by killing Lovejoy.)
>
>Today, 1 percent of the population of the United States controls
>42 percent of the wealth -- and 445 billionaires own 45 percent of
>the world's wealth. In the country where chattel slaves once
>picked cotton, welfare recipients in the "workfare" slave-labor
>program now pick up filthy debris from city parks with their bare
>hands. As in Lovejoy's time, the crying need of the present is for
>those who see further and feel deeper to step forward. Once again,
>it is time to shake people out of their complacency. It is time
>for words as uncompromising as those of Elijah Lovejoy and William
>Lloyd Garrison to ring out again from the speaker's platform and
>leap off the pages of the revolutionary press.
>
>History will never forget Lovejoy, the man who dared to challenge
>the political domination of the United States by 10,000
>slaveholders. If we honor him for courageously speaking the truth
>that "slavery is sin" even in the slave state of Missouri, don't
>we have an obligation to speak truth to power today, to challenge
>the political control of this society by a small class of
>millionaires?
>
>*****************************************************************
>This article originated in the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online Edition),
>Vol. 24 No. 11/ November, 1997; P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL
>60654; Email: [log in to unmask]; http://www.lrna.org
>Feel free to reproduce and use unless marked as copyrighted. The
>PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE depends on donations from its readers.
>******************************************************************
|