Elijah Parisjh Lovejoy, an abolitionist and newspaper…

Elijah Parisjh Lovejoy, an abolitionist and newspaper editor, is killed by a pro-slavery mob at his warehouse in Alton, Illinois on November 7, 1837.

Lovejoy had had a deeply religious upbringing, as his father was a Congregational minister and his mother a devout Christian.

He had attended Waterville College in his home state of Maine, and graduated at the top of his class, with first class honors.

Afterwards, he traveled to Illinois and, after realizing that the area was largely unsettled, he had moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1827, working as an editor of an anti-Jacksonian newspaper and running a school.

Five years later, influenced by the Revivalist movement, he decided to become a preacher.

He attended the Princeton Theological Seminary and became an ordained Presbyterian preacher.

Once he returned to St. Louis, he set up a church and became the editor of a weekly religious newspaper, the St. Louis Observer.

He wrote a number of editorials, critical of other religions and slavery.

In May 1836, he had been run out of town by his opponents after he chastised Judge Luke E. Lawless, who had chosen not to charge individuals linked to a mob lynching of a free black man who was in jail on suspicion of murder.

Lawless had told jurors that an insane frenzy had gripped the mob, and went on to say that legal action should not be sought against any particular individuals, because the jury was not familiar with the captivating mania of mob mentality.

Lovejoy had chastised Lawless for essentially turning a cold shoulder to the lynching, calling him a "Papist.” The day after Lovejoy's comments appeared in the Observer, a mob, presumably the same one that orchestrated the McIntosh lynching, destroyed his printing press.

Lovejoy responded by announcing that the paper would be moved to Alton, Illinois.

However, another mob destroyed the press before it could reach Alton.

Once there, Lovejoy became the editor of an abolitionist paper, the Alton Observer.

On three occasions, pro-slavery factions who want to stop his publishing abolitionist views have destroyed his printing press.

In October 1837, Alton's leaders had asked Lovejoy to leave town, but he had refused, arguing that he has as much right to be in Alton as anyone else.

On November 7, 1837, a pro-slavery mob approaches a warehouse belonging to merchant Winthrop Sargent Gilman that holds Lovejoy's fourth printing press.

Lovejoy and his supporters exchange gunfire with the mob.

Lovejoy and his men return fire.

Several people in the crowd are hit, and one is killed.

The leaders of the mob decide to burn down Gilman's warehouse, so they get a ladder and set it alongside the building.

They attempt to climb the ladder to set fire to the warehouse's wooden roof, but Lovejoy and one of his supporters stop them.

After the mob sets up their ladder along the side of the building for a second time, Lovejoy goes outside to intervene, but he is promptly shot five times with a shotgun and dies on the spot.

Lovejoy is hailed as a martyr by abolitionists across the country.

In his name, his brother Owen Lovejoy becomes the leader of the Illinois abolitionists.

His murder is a sign of the increasing tension within the country leading up to the Civil War, and it is for this reason that he is considered by some to be the "first casualty of the Civil War.”