Elijah P. Lovejoy (1802-1837) was an
abolitionist in the 1830s, running a newspaper called the
St Louis Observer in
Missouri, a slave state. Slavery advocates attacked and destroyed his presses three times. He decided to move across the river to
Alton, Illinois, in 1837, where he renamed his newspaper as the
Alton Observer. Although Illinois was a free state, there were numerous people in the area who supported slavery. Southern Illinois was settled by many slaveowners from the South. On November 7, 1837, a crowd attacked the warehouse owned by
Winthrop Sargent Gilman, an abolitionist who had groceries in St. Louis and aided Lovejoy in acquiring his fourth press. Lovejoy and some supporters were in the warehouse where the presses were stored. As the building was stormed, the attackers apparently began firing guns. Lovejoy and his men returned fire, but in the conflict Lovejoy was killed. His death garnered national attention. He was considered a martyr in the causes of both
freedom of speech and the abolition of slavery. In 1857,
Abraham Lincoln wrote to a friend about this event: Lovejoy's tragic death for freedom in every sense marked his sad ending as the most important single event that ever happened in the new world. :"- Abraham Lincoln, 1857 letter to friend Lemen" The following year, Lincoln gave his
House Divided speech in June 1858 during his campaign for the US Senate seat representing Illinois. Having been buried in an unmarked grave in Alton, Lovejoy's remains became lost for some time. Dimmock led an effort to find them, discovering the site was partially covered by a roadway. Lovejoy's remains were exhumed and reinterred in the cemetery that is now overlooked by his monument. Dimmock arranged for installation of a gravestone here. In the 1890s, work began in earnest on the monument. It was designed by R. P. Bringhurst, a St. Louis sculptor, and built by Culver Stone Company of
Springfield, Illinois. ==Structure==