The Elijah Lovejoy Monument, at the north end of Monument Ave., stands at the entrance to Alton City Cemetery. Visible from the greater part of Alton, it was erected in 1897 by the State of Illinois and by the city in memory of the anti-slavery editor. A slim granite column, 93 feet high, supports a 17-foot bronze figure of Victory, flanked with two shorter columns, each bearing an eagle with outstretched wings.
Lovejoy came to Alton in 1835 from St. Louis, where he had begun his anti-slavery agitation, after a mob had destroyed his press. In Alton, before he had printed, a single issue of his paper, the Observer, another mob threw his press into the Mississippi. He obtained a third press and continued publication for more than a year.
Although Alton was nominally an anti-slavery town, it was sufficiently near the slavery line to harbor many anti-Abolitionists. Late in 1837 the third press was destroyed. Undaunted, Lovejoy obtained a fourth, and stored it in a warehouse on the river bank, where next day a mob besieged him and his friends, gathered to protect the press. Shortly after nightfall the warehouse was attacked, and in the exchange of shots Lovejoy and some of the attackers were killed. A few days later both sides were acquitted in a trial denounced as a travesty on justice.
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