Memoir of the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, Murdered at Alton, Illinois, Nov 7, 1837

In the mid-1830s, pro-slavery mobs destroyed the printing presses that Elijah Parish Lovejoy used to publish anti-slavery treatises in St. Louis, Missouri--a slave state. Fearing for his life, Lovejoy moved to the free state of Illinois, but violence escalated, and he was fatally shot in November 1837. His death galvanized anti-slavery advocates, including young Illinois State Representative Abraham Lincoln.