Elijah P. Lovejoy Gravesite

Elijah Lovejoy was a minister, publisher, famous abolitionist, and considered by some to be the first casualty of the American Civil War. He published the Alton Observer that advocated the abolition of slavery. Three times angry white pro-slavery mobs destroyed his press by throwing it into the nearby Mississippi River, and each time he got a new one and continued his newspaper. While defending his press for a fourth time from an angry mob, Lovejoy was shot five times with a shotgun and killed. He is remembered as a martyr to the abolitionist cause, and his younger brother, Owen Lovejoy of Princeton, IL, carried on his work as a "conductor" on the underground railroad, as a U.S. congressman, and as a good fried and long-time supporter of Abraham Lincoln. Elijah Lovejoy is also known as a champion of the freedom of the press, and is quoted in his paper, "We distinctly avow it to be our settled purpose, never, while life lasts, to yield to this new system of attempting to destroy, by means of mob violence, the right of conscience, the freedom of opinion, and of the press."