my grave shall be made in Alton

“If I fall,
my grave
shall be made
in Alton”
Elijah Lovejoy, Martyr for Abolition
by
Judy Hoffman
T
wo climactic issues, both national in scope,
severely affected the Alton-Godfrey region
of Illinois in 1837. One issue was the state
of the economy. A decade of surface prosperity, largely created by overspeculation
in western land, poor banking policies, and reckless
investments in internal improvements, was rapidly drawing to a close.
The other issue—that of slavery—was more critical
and far more complex. The question of human bondage
had plagued America for almost two hundred years.
During the 1830s, the clash between those who wished to
end slavery and those who wished to expand and extend
the institution escalated. Nat Turner’s slave rebellion and
William Garrison’s call for the immediate emancipation
of all enslaved persons in 1831, followed by the forma-
{
A memorial card for Rev. Elijah Parish Lovejoy, the abolitionist
newspaper editor who lost his life to a proslavery mob in Alton in
1837. Portraits, MHS Photographs and Prints.
Hoffman
Spring 2005
| 11
In July 1837, Lovejoy began to publish articles about the evils of slavery and to openly call for its abolition.
Racism and economic uncertainty combined to raise public sentiment against Lovejoy. Wood engraving, 1853.
Autographs for Freedom, MHS Library.
tion of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, outraged Southern slave owners, who claimed talk of immediate emancipation, or abolition, would provoke further
slave revolts and lead to economic chaos in the South.
Most Northern whites agreed.
Abolitionists were subsequently subjected to mob
action, violence, and death threats. When the American
Anti-Slavery Society continued to distribute antislavery
literature and circulate antislavery petitions, the proslavery power imposed a “gag resolution,” forbidding the discussion of slavery in Congress. Slave owners, determined
to put a stop to all antislavery activity, adopted state laws
that made it illegal to circulate antislavery literature in
the South. In the slave city of St. Louis, prominent citizens formed a committee of vigilance to suppress antislavery activity and abolitionist publications. In 1837, a
committee of the Illinois state legislature denounced
both abolitionists and antislavery societies.
Although Illinois was, by law, a free state, the vast
majority of the population, especially in the southern,
12 | Spring 2005
Elijah Lovejoy12 |
Gateway
more populous half of the state, defended the South’s
position and favored the gag rule. In the south-central
portions of the state, between Alton and Springfield,
small pockets of antislavery sentiment existed, most
notably in areas served by missionaries from New
England. The American Home Missionary Society, a
patron of the antislavery movement, supported many of
the missionaries. Aware of the state’s demographic makeup, the missionaries concentrated their efforts in the
counties north of a line drawn due east across Illinois
from Alton.
Alton was a border town within a border state. The
city’s makeup mirrored that of the state and of the
nation. Most of the residents of Lower Alton were
Southerners from Kentucky and Virginia, while the
majority of Upper Alton’s inhabitants were Northerners
from New England and New York. Alton was a city
divided by the Upper Town and the Lower Town, by
Northern Yankees and Southern sympathizers, by an
upper business class and a lower laboring class, by tem-
Spring 2005
perate teetotalers and intemperate “Mint Juleps,” by antiJackson Whigs and pro-Jackson Democrats.
Despite the boasts of its promoters, the city was still
in the throes of its infancy. In 1837, Lower Alton was a
bustling river port, a melting pot of businessmen and
frontiersmen, of missionaries, merchants, doctors,
lawyers, dockhands, fishermen, and farmers. By day, the
city was filled with the noisy clamor and rank aromas of
frontier progress. At night, when the pious and temperate retired to the comparative quiet of their Upper Alton
homes, the restless and unruly gathered in the saloons
along Tontine Row (Front Street). By night, the bustling
river port became a brawling river town. When hard
times and the issue of slavery were added to the volatile
mix, the division erupted into a series of violent and tragic events that altered the area’s future and influenced the
course of national history.
The first sign of trouble occurred in 1836 when the
Reverend Elijah Lovejoy, a crusading antislavery editor,
moved his beleaguered newspaper from St. Louis to Alton.
Originally from New England, Lovejoy followed the dictates of his Puritan conscience in St. Louis. After taking
strong editorial stands against the evils of Sabbath breaking, tobacco, hard liquor, mobs, and “popery”—all common
themes among nineteenth-century Protestant reformers—
Lovejoy added slavery to this litany of sins. Missouri slave
owners immediately labeled him an abolitionist. Besieged
by violence and numerous incidents of theft and vandalism, Lovejoy decided to move his publication to Alton,
where he had friends and financial supporters.
No doubt the young editor thought he would be safe
in the “free” state of Illinois. He was wrong. When his
printing press landed on the Alton riverfront in late July
1836, a group of five or six men, acting under the cover
of darkness, smashed the press and threw the pieces in
the river.
Most Altonians thought the mob action was the
work of St. Louisans. Nevertheless, the incident called
attention to Lovejoy’s reputation as an abolitionist. At a
crowded public meeting following the press destruction,
local citizens agreed to contribute money for a new press
as long as Lovejoy agreed not to print antislavery articles.
Lovejoy assured the crowd that he was not an abolitionist. He said he did not think it would be necessary to
write antislavery articles in a free state. “But gentlemen,”
he asserted, “as long as I am an American citizen, and as
Lovejoy’s Printing Office in Alton, Illinois. Lovejoy moved the
Observer office to Illinois, a free state, to avoid incidents of
violence, theft, and vandalism by St. Louis slaveholders. Engraving
after a photograph, no date, Illinois Collection, MHS Photographs
and Prints.
long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold
myself at liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject.”
Lovejoy was honest when he said he was not an abolitionist, but in the year ahead he would change his views.
With financial support from Benjamin Godfrey and
Winthrop Gilman, Alton’s most prominent businessmen
and owners of Godfrey, Gilman and Company, and a loan
from the State Bank of Illinois, Lovejoy purchased a new
press and established an office at number 18 Hawley’s
Row, on Piasa Street in Lower Alton. In the first two
issues of the Alton Observer, Lovejoy clarified his antislavery stance: “I am opposed to slavery;” he wrote,
“believing it to be a great moral, and of course, political
evil, a sin and a curse to any community where it exists.”
For the next few months, Lovejoy avoided the subject of
slavery, instead limiting his editorials to the evils of
Sabbath breaking, intemperance, grogshops, and tobacco. By the end of 1836, the Observer was gaining subscribers. Meanwhile, the Observer’s editor was quietly
inching closer and closer to abolitionism.
In February 1837, Lovejoy resumed his antislavery
crusade. In one of a series of highly controversial editorial letters, Lovejoy posed the question, What is slavery?
Responding from the point of view of an enslaved male,
Lovejoy answered the question:
It is to have my back subjected to the cowhide …
at the will or caprice of my master.… It is to toil
all day beneath an almost vertical sun with the
bitter certainty always before me that not one
cent of what I earn, is, or can be my own. It is to
Hoffman
Spring 2005
| 13
depart from my hut every morning, with the sickening fear, that before I return at night, it will be
visited by the slave-driving fiend. It is to return at
night to find my worst fears realized. My firstborn son, denied even the privilege of bidding his
father farewell, is on his way, a chained and manacled victim, to a distant market.
Addressing the taboo subject of miscegenation,
Lovejoy continued:
It is to enter my cabin, and see my wife or daughter struggling in the lustful embraces of my master, or some of his white friends.… [It is] to
become, instead of a free moral agent, a thing, a
piece of property, and to be used as such—to be
deprived of all personal and civil rights.
That spring, the national economy began spiraling
downward. Land sales were down. The price of cotton
fell by half in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the price of
lead dropped in the East. Although the Alton harbor was
busy, and local newspapers continued to tout area prosperity, Benjamin Godfrey and his partner were worried.
Alton’s trade was largely dependent upon the lead
monopoly, and the lead monopoly was dependent upon
inflated prices.
When the local economy worsened, the Alton
Telegraph blamed the Jackson administration, and the
Illinois Temperance Herald blamed hard liquor, but
Lovejoy lashed out at public greed: “Wealth has been the
god after which this nation … has gone a whoring. [In
the quest for] railroads, canals, bank stock, sections and
quarter sections of land, and town lots,” he accused,
“speculation had become a perfect mania.… But the bubble has burst.”
The public was tired of his criticism, weary of his
reform efforts, and frightened by his radical antislavery
articles. Local sentiment turned against the outspoken editor. Many blamed his articles for the slowdown in Alton’s
trade. Whispers and rumors began to circulate. Antiabolition sentiment increased. Still, Lovejoy persisted. In
June, he called for names of individuals willing to circulate
petitions on behalf of the abolition of slavery. In July, he
openly advocated immediate emancipation and called for
the formation of an Illinois Anti-Slavery Society.
The community had had enough. On July 8, an
anonymous handbill circulated, inviting those dissatis-
14 | Spring 2005
Elijah Lovejoy
fied with the abolitionist course of the Observer to attend
a public meeting at the Market House in Lower Alton.
During the meeting, prominent Altonians accused
Lovejoy of violating his original pledge by introducing
abolition doctrines in the Observer, contrary to the “will
of a majority of the citizens of Alton.” A letter, signed by
a committee of five well-known businessmen, requested
that Lovejoy respond regarding his future intentions.
Lovejoy’s response reiterated his constitutional right to
freely express his views.
In August, Lovejoy helped organize the Madison
County Anti-Slavery Society in Upper Alton. Officers
included the Reverend Hubbell Loomis, president;
Enoch Long and Charles W. Hunter, vice presidents;
Owen Lovejoy (Elijah’s brother), secretary; and John S.
Clark, treasurer. That same month, Elijah Lovejoy
renewed his call for a convention to form a statewide
Anti-Slavery Society.
In an inflammatory editorial titled “Abolition,” the
Missouri Republican, a St. Louis newspaper that was widely read in Alton, called for action against Lovejoy and his
newspaper:
We had hoped that our neighbors would have
ejected from amongst them that minister of mischief.… Something must be done in this matter,
and that speedily! The good people of Illinois
must either put a stop to the efforts of these
fanatics, or expel them from the community. If
this is not done … the trade of the slaveholding
states, and particularly Missouri, must stop.
Everyone who desires the harmony of the country, and the peace and prosperity of all, should
unite to put them down.
Powerful slaveholding interests and political opportunists heeded the St. Louis newspaper’s advice. Seizing
upon the unrest in Alton to further their own agendas, a
secret organization of twelve men united against Lovejoy.
Three of the twelve men were later identified as Alton
doctors: James Jennings, Thomas Hope, and Horace Beall.
William Carr, a paid representative of the St. Louis vigilance committee, was also a likely member of the group.
Lovejoy’s most powerful enemy, the man who did the
most to fan the flames of local unrest, was Usher F.
Linder, the attorney general of the state of Illinois. As
attorney general, Linder was required by law to live in
Fayette County, where the state capital was then located.
Instead, Linder moved to Alton in the summer of 1837.
In all likelihood, Linder was acting on behalf of his mentor, Illinois Supreme Court justice Theophilus W. Smith,
a strong proslavery man and a political enemy of the officers of the State Bank.
During Usher Linder’s brief stay in Alton, he
engaged in the private practice of law. In the style of the
times, Linder’s newspaper advertisements contained a list
of references. Theophilus W. Smith’s name appeared first,
followed by a host of prominent Southerners, most of
whom were vehemently opposed to immediate emancipation. Tall, handsome, and reputedly a heavy drinker,
Linder was popular among the “boys” who frequented the
grogshops on Alton’s Tontine Row. He was a crude but
skillful speaker who seldom missed an opportunity to
denounce Yankees, Yankee reforms, and Yankee abolitionists. “Honest John” Hogan assisted Linder in his antiabolition harangues. A former Methodist circuit rider
turned merchant-banker and politician, Hogan served in
the state legislature with Linder in 1836. Hogan, too, was
“gifted in the way of gab.” Together, the two men proved
to be powerful Lovejoy opponents.
On August 21, 1837, following the formation of the
secret organization, Lovejoy was confronted by a group of
men who threatened to tar and feather him. Later that
same night, a mob entered the office of the Observer and
destroyed the second printing press. When a third press
arrived exactly a month later, on September 21, ten or
twelve men, their faces covered with handkerchiefs,
broke into the building where the press was stored,
demolished it, and threw the pieces into the river. A few
days later, while Lovejoy and his wife, the former Celia
Ann French, were visiting at the home of Celia’s mother
in St. Charles, Missouri, a drunken mob broke into the
house and assaulted both Lovejoy and his pregnant wife.
Lovejoy and his family were under siege and unprotected. Feeble attempts on the part of Mayor John Krum
and local authorities to protect Lovejoy and bring the
press destroyers to justice would become infamous. By
October, Lovejoy abandoned his formerly passive stance
and slept with a loaded musket by his bedside. “I feel that
I do not walk the streets in safety, and every night when
I lie down, it is with the deep conviction that there are
those near me and around me who seek my life,” wrote
Lovejoy. “I have no doubt that four-fifths of the inhabi-
Between July 1836 and November 1837, Lovejoy lost four
printing presses to mob action. A section of one of his presses
was retrieved in 1915 from its resting place in the Mississippi
River and is currently on display in the office of the Alton
Telegraph. Photograph by Cary Horton, 2005.
tants of this city are glad that my press has been destroyed
by the mob. … They hate mobs … but they hate abolitionism a great deal more.”
Lovejoy’s analysis was correct. There were probably
no more than ten abolitionists in Alton. Perhaps another fifty, most of them members of the newly formed
Upper Alton Presbyterian Church, supported the editor’s
right to free expression. Local newspapers were largely
silent on the subject. The vast majority of Alton’s citizens, including business and religious leaders and prominent public officials, blamed Lovejoy for the mob’s
actions. Benjamin Godfrey publicly withdrew his support, although his partner, Winthrop Gilman, was an
abolitionist and one of the few men who supported
Lovejoy to the end.
Hoffman
Spring 2005
| 15
Pro-Slavery Riot of November 7, 1837. Death of Rev. E.P. Lovejoy. The night of November 7, Lovejoy was shot and
killed while defending his printing press from a small group of armed men. Wood engraving, ca. 1837. Illinois Collection,
MHS Photographs and Prints.
About this time, Lovejoy entertained thoughts of
resigning as editor of the Observer. However, he decided
to leave the final decision to the men invited to attend
the Illinois State Anti-Slavery Convention, which was
scheduled to meet in the Upper Alton Presbyterian
Church, October 26–28. Invitations had gone out to delegates from all over the state, although no one from
southern Illinois responded. Those who came were primarily Presbyterian and Congregational ministers and
elders from central and northern Illinois. Schooled in the
traditions of the New England states, these men believed
that slavery was a sin and a violation of the Declaration
of Independence.
Usher Linder, John Hogan, and known mob members disrupted the convention. In the midst of wild confusion, Linder shook his fist in Lovejoy’s face at one
point. When the meeting abruptly adjourned, the attorney general and his supporters gathered outside in the
churchyard. Linder, perched on a woodpile, ridiculed
Lovejoy, conducted a lengthy denouncement of Yankees,
and encouraged the boys to gather more friends and
return the following day.
16 | Spring 2005
Elijah Lovejoy
The next day, Linder and his friends packed the
church, outnumbering and outvoting the antislavery
men while the boys cheered wildly. The following afternoon, the antislavery conventioneers met at the Upper
Alton home of the Reverend Thaddeus Hurlburt. Two
issues remained. One was the organization of the AntiSlavery Society; the other was whether or not to reestablish the Alton Observer. As a mob milled around
outside threatening to break down the door, the courageous men proceeded with their plans. They organized
the Illinois State Anti-Slavery Society, and, in the interest of freedom of the press, they also determined the
Observer, with Elijah Lovejoy as its editor, should be reestablished in Alton. A fourth press was ordered.
Both sides were now determined, and both sides were
armed. Faced with mounting public tension, alarmed
businessmen called a meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to find a common ground, reach a compromise,
and restore civic order. The town’s most respected ministers, politicians, and business leaders attended. With the
larger side calling for Lovejoy to sever his connections
with the Observer and leave Alton, and the other side
insisting upon the editor’s right to print and publish
whatever he pleased, the chairman, gubernatorial candidate Cyrus Edwards, appointed a committee of five to
review the resolutions of both sides and return the following day. The appointed committee was composed of
four anti-Lovejoy men and one Lovejoy supporter—
Winthrop Gilman.
As expected, when the meeting reconvened, the
committee submitted a resolution stating that Lovejoy
must stop publishing. Gilman protested, maintaining
that “rigid enforcement of the law would prove the only
sure protection of the rights of citizens, and the only safe
remedy for similar excitements in the future.”
Hogan and Linder spoke. When Linder sat down,
Lovejoy rose. He removed his overcoat, walked to the
front of the room, and extemporaneously delivered an eloquent, emotionally charged speech. The issue, he said, was
not whether he could or could not publish a newspaper in
Alton: “This right … is solemnly guaranteed to me by the
Constitution of these United States and of this state.”
What he wished to know was whether the civil authorities
would enforce the law and protect him in that right:
Mr. Chairman.… Why should I flee from Alton?
Is this not a free state?… Where can I be safe if
not here? Have I not a right to claim the protection of the laws?… Sir, the very act of retreating
will embolden the mob to follow me wherever I
go. No sir, there is no way to escape the mob but
to abandon the path of duty. And that, God
helping me, I will never do.
It has been said here, that my hand is against
every man, and every man’s hand is against me.
The last part of the declaration is too painfully
true. I do indeed find almost every man’s hand
against me, but against whom in this place has
my hand been raised? I appeal to every individual present. Whom of you have I injured? Whose
character have I traduced? Whose family have I
molested? Whose business have I meddled with?
If any, let him rise here and testify against me.
Lovejoy paused. No one responded. He continued:
If in anything I have offended against the law, I
am not so popular in this community as that it
would be difficult to convict me. You have
courts and judges and juries; they find nothing
against me. And now you come together for the
purpose of driving out a confessedly innocent
man, for no cause but that he dares to think and
speak as his conscience and his God dictate.
Will conduct like this stand the scrutiny of our
country? Of posterity?
Pause, I beseech you, and reflect. The present
excitement will soon be over. The voice of conscience will at last be heard. [Then] as you
review the scenes of this hour, you will be forced
to say: “He was right. He was right.”
Sir, I dare not flee away from Alton.… No sir,
the contest has commenced here; and here it
must be finished. Before God and you all, I here
pledge myself to continue it—if need be, till
death. If I fall, my grave shall be made in Alton.
When he finished speaking, many men were openly
weeping, but no one rose to his defense. Lovejoy turned
and left the building. The audience was silent. When
Linder took the floor, his familiar attack on “Yankee foreigners from abroad” destroyed the solemn mood.
Lovejoy’s friends also filed out of the room. After they
left, motions were made calling for Lovejoy to end any
association with any newspaper establishment in the city.
The resolutions passed unanimously. Following the meeting, Usher Linder, the chief law enforcement officer in
the state, told listeners that Elijah Lovejoy would be
killed within two weeks.
The fourth printing press arrived from Cincinnati,
Ohio, at 3 A.M. on November 6. By prior arrangement
with Winthrop Gilman, the press was taken to the third
story of Godfrey and Gilman’s warehouse for safekeeping.
At 10 P.M. on November 7, an armed and drunken mob
of some thirty men, including Hope, Beall, Jennings, and
Carr, gathered outside the warehouse. Inside, Elijah
Lovejoy, Winthrop Gilman, Enoch Long, and eleven
other men guarded the new printing press. They, too,
were armed. Shots were exchanged, first from outside the
building, then from inside the building. When Lyman
Bishop, a mob member, was mortally wounded, the lawless throng temporarily retreated. They soon returned
with ladders, torches, and more men, shouting: “Fire the
building, fire the building,” “Burn ’em out, burn ’em out,”
“Shoot every d——d abolitionist as he leaves.”
Hoffman
Spring 2005
| 17
Mrs. Frederick Graves, a semi-invalid and the wife of
the pastor of the Lower Alton Presbyterian Church, frantically hurried to the church tower and began to ring the
bells to summon help.
At the warehouse, a mob member propped an extension ladder against the wall of the stone building.
Another mob member climbed the ladder and set the
wooden-shingled roof afire. When Lovejoy, accompanied
by two or three other men, left the building to put the
blaze out, more shots rang out. Lovejoy was hit with five
bullets. He ran back into the warehouse, climbed the
stairs to the third floor counting room, collapsed, and
died. The mob entered the room where Elijah Lovejoy’s
lifeless body lay, smashed the printing press, and threw
the pieces into the river.
No one recalled when the bells stopped ringing.
It rained the next day as Winthrop Gilman outlined the
tragic events of the prior evening in a letter to his brother in New York. In closing, Gilman wrote: “Thus has
ended our attempt to sustain law, which we felt it a
solemn duty to do & which we engaged in with prayer.
The result is that we cannot do it—resistance to it is useless & we must yield for the present to the powers that
be. … Did I do right?”
On November 9, 1837, Elijah Lovejoy was buried in
a simple pine casket. He would have been thirty-seven
years old that day. William “Scotch” Johnson, a free
black, stained the casket with pokeberries and dug the
grave in an obscure area, near Lovejoy’s Hunterstown
home. The grave, located between two large oak trees,
was marked with a plain wooden board. It was a solemnly quiet occasion. Celia Ann, Lovejoy’s wife, was too distraught to attend her husband’s burial. The Reverend
Thomas Lippincott, Winthrop Gilman’s father-in-law
and Elijah Lovejoy’s close friend, delivered a prayer.
Area newspapers printed very little about the riot or
about Lovejoy’s death, but the Alton Observer resumed
publication in Cincinnati in December. A letter, written
by an Altonian, appeared in the Observer, describing the
local scene:
Monument to Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Alton, Illinois.
Shortly before his death, Lovejoy declared, “the contest
has commenced here; and here it must be finished.… If I
fall, my grave shall be made in Alton.” Photograph by
Cary Horton, 2005.
18 | Spring 2005
Elijah Lovejoy
There is now comparative quietness in our city.
The mob, having triumphed over the laws, have
undisputed control. No steps have been taken to
arrest the offenders, although they are well
known. Indeed, they boast openly in the streets
of their deeds of valor. Report says there has
been quite a contention between two or three of
the [mob] leaders as to who was entitled to the
honor of shooting [Lovejoy]. There is, probably
no city on the civilized globe, where, when the
evidence of guilt is so abundant, and so palpable,
no efforts would be made to bring the offenders
to justice. The magistrates who are not in the
interest of the mob, feel, like all the rest of us,
that they are at their mercy.
In January, a grand jury indicted mob members John
Solomon, Levi Palmer, Horace Beall, Josiah Nutter, Jacob
Smith, David Butler, William Carr, and James M. Rock.
The men were charged with the crime of “violent riot.”
Shockingly, the jury also indicted twelve press defenders.
Charged with “violent resistance to riot” were Amos Roff,
William Harned, Enoch Long, George Walworth, George
Whitney, John Noble, James Moran Jr., Henry Tanner,
Royal Weller, Reuben Gerry, the Reverend Thaddeus
Hurlburt, and Winthrop Gilman. G. T. M. Davis was one
of the attorneys for the press defenders. Davis’s brother-inlaw, Judge William Martin, presided over the trials. Usher
Linder was granted permission to assist in the defense of
the mob and in the prosecution of the press defenders.
The jury found no one guilty.
Just a year earlier, the same judge in the same Alton
courtroom convicted and punished a mob that “with
malicious and riotous intentions” demolished a magician’s apparatus. At that time, the Alton Telegraph congratulated the community for its “swift and certain justice.” In the year that followed, a number of people, also
“with malicious and riotous intentions,” demolished
Elijah Lovejoy’s printing apparatus—not once, but four
times. They demolished, threatened, hounded, vandalized, torched, and murdered, and they openly boasted of
their deeds. Yet no one was found guilty of any crime.
The trials were a judicial farce and an official cover-up of
reprehensible magnitude.
Alton newspapers remained silent on the subject.
Many St. Louis and Southern newspapers said Lovejoy
got what he deserved. But a headline in the New York
Coloured American proclaimed: “A Great Man Has
Fallen.” The article that followed asserted: “Coloured
men cannot be enslaved nor oppressed much longer in
America.… [Slavery and oppression] may be forced for a
while, but the time must of necessity be short.”
In the East, Lovejoy was referred to as “the first martyr to the cause of abolitionism” and “a martyr to the
cause of liberty of speech and the press.” Most eastern
newspapers condemned Alton, blaming the mob, the
mayor, the city council, and the city’s inhabitants for
Lovejoy’s death. The Boston Atlas referred to Alton as a
town of “murderous notoriety,” while accusing Altonians
of “a deliberate and long plotted murder.” The
Massachusetts Lynn Record asked:
Who but a savage, or cold-hearted murderer
would now go to Alton?… Hereafter, when a
criminal is considered too base for any known
punishment, it will be said of him—“he ought to
be banished to a place as vile and infamous as
Alton”—a place where freedom is disowned—
where the defenders of freedom are murdered by
the consent of the inhabitants—where the inhabitants themselves are land pirates—where the
Attorney General, the representative of the state,
instead of bringing criminals to judgment, encourages—spurs them on, to the perpetration of the
foulest crimes, the basest murder; and the Mayor
of the city sits as a judge advocate for the mob.
At the end of 1836, easterners referred to Alton as
the Queen of the West. By the end of 1837, Alton was
known as the Sodom of the West. The bullets that killed
Elijah Lovejoy ricocheted around the nation and
returned to destroy Alton’s reputation. Lovejoy’s murder
smeared Alton with a stain that the silence of local newspapers failed to cover up and the injustice of the Alton
trials failed to clean up.
Immigration ceased. Many of the town’s leading eastern businessmen sold their homes and businesses and
moved on. Some of Lovejoy’s most determined opponents also moved. In 1838, Usher Linder moved to
Chicago, where he remained politically active, always
maintaining he was “severely assailed and maligned” for
his part in the Lovejoy issue. The Reverend John Hogan
and Mayor John Krum moved to St. Louis, where they
attained wealth and political prominence. In 1843, Krum
was made judge of the St. Louis Circuit Court. In 1846,
he ruled that free blacks could not plead their constitutional rights because they were not citizens. Krum served
as mayor of St. Louis in 1848–1849. John Hogan, labeled
St. Louis’s “chief drum-beater,” was appointed to the St.
Louis Commission of Public Works in 1838. He became
Hoffman
Spring 2005
| 19
Alton, Illinois, ca. 1848. The murder of Elijah Lovejoy
destroyed Alton’s reputation and contributed to its decline
from a promising “Queen of the West” city to a struggling
small town in the mid-nineteenth century. Watercolor and
ink on paper by Henry Lewis, ca. 1848. MHS Museum
Collections.
president of the Board of Public Works in 1840–1841 and
served as the postmaster of the City of St. Louis from
1857 to 1861. In 1861, Hogan was elected to Congress.
Thomas Hope, one of the twelve members of the
secret group that hounded Lovejoy, eventually became
the mayor of Alton. Three of the mob leaders, each of
whom claimed responsibility for Lovejoy’s death, met
violent deaths themselves. James Jennings was reportedly stabbed to death in a barroom brawl in Vicksburg,
Mississippi. Horace Beall was murdered on the Texas
plains. One report asserted Beall joined the Texas
Rangers and was killed at the hands of his own men.
Another report claimed Comanche Indians burned him
alive. James Rock committed suicide in an Ohio prison.
On the heels of Lovejoy’s death, the national economic crisis reached panic proportions in Alton. Godfrey
and Gilman were forced to sell their latest lead shipment
in New York at a ruinous loss. The vertical monopoly on
the lead market collapsed, triggering the failures of
Alton’s three major freight forwarding firms, which left
the Alton branch of the State Bank with $1,000,000 in
uncollectible debt.
The bank turned to its delinquent borrowers, most of
whom were businessmen, for payment. The businessmen,
in turn, forced their debtors, most of whom were laborers
and farmers, to settle up. But laborers had no jobs, and
farmers no longer had markets for their goods. One after
another, Alton’s enterprises tumbled down. New businesses halted, and established businesses closed their
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Elijah Lovejoy
doors. Alton’s four major stock companies failed.
Construction on the Alton Hotel Company stopped in
midstream, leaving behind a one hundred- by two hundred-foot foundation, portions of which remained for
years. Alton Shot and Lead Manufacturing Company
never went into operation, and the Alton Marine and
Fire Insurance Company closed. Land values dropped to
zero. Hard times set in.
Although banks across the nation were in trouble,
the governor of Illinois called for another bank investigation. This time, the investigation revealed startling
management abuses. The commissioners singled out the
Alton bank branch in particular, accusing its officers of
devoting too large a share of the bank’s resources to foster lead speculation and of failing to accept profitable St.
Louis patronage. They blamed the bank’s dire straits on
the unbridled ambition of a few Alton speculators who
attempted to divert the St. Louis river trade to Alton,
thereby garnering great fortunes for themselves. The
report concluded that Benjamin Godfrey and Winthrop
Gilman, as directors and officers of the State Bank of
Illinois, violated the bank charter to further their own
ends. Following the limited release of the report, Godfrey
and Gilman resigned from their banking positions and
prepared to dissolve their business.
Benjamin Godfrey and Winthrop Gilman lost their
banking positions, their freight forwarding and commission firm, and their extensive investments in Galena
land, lead mines, and steamships. At twenty-nine years of
age, Winthrop Gilman’s health was “broken.” His doctor
advised him to abandon business altogether. Benjamin
Godfrey attended to all the affairs associated with dissolving Godfrey, Gilman and Company.
The public, increasingly alarmed by the mounting
state debt incurred by the Illinois State legislature’s internal improvement programs, pressured legislators to repeal
or modify the Internal Improvement Act. Construction
continued long enough to complete the Illinois and
Michigan Canal. The remainder of the program was
abandoned. The National Road stopped at Vandalia,
Illinois. Local river road, bridge, and canal proposals were
never begun. Less than one hundred miles of railroad
track was built—none of it in or around Alton. The state
of Illinois owed only one hundred thousand dollars
before it passed the Internal Improvements Act. When
the program came to a halt, the state owed $17,000,000.
Since the State Bank was insolvent, there were no dividends to pay the interest on the debt. Illinois legislators
were forced to increase taxes.
Bankruptcy, foreclosures, and lawsuits became commonplace. Real estate speculators lost their holdings.
Lots were sold for taxes or reverted to Eastern creditors.
One prominent businessman, overextended by his speculative investments, was ultimately evicted from his home
at gunpoint by his own father-in-law. Enoch Long, whose
losses totaled more than fifty thousand dollars, was forced
to sell everything and begin anew at age fifty.
Alton’s prosperity and hopes for the future were
gone. The city that was noted for the quality of its citizenry, its benevolence, its men of influence, witnessed a
steady exodus of its most progressive and prosperous citizens. Alton was an ostracized city with a devastated
economy. Its commercial empire was gone. The formerly
busy harbor was busy no more. Only the Eagle, a small,
single engine packet that ferried passengers between
Alton and St. Louis, remained. At Alton’s zenith, the
Eagle’s fares were a dollar per passenger. The fares ultimately dropped to ten cents per passenger.
The rapid succession of tragic events that surrounded
Elijah Lovejoy’s murder and the hard times that followed
left those who remained in a state of shock. They found it
difficult to separate the events. Stunned, many area citizens
blamed Lovejoy for the panic; others blamed the panic for
Lovejoy’s murder. Eastern abolitionists took pleasure in saying the curse of God had fallen upon the city.
As if to strike the final blow, in 1840 some “evil-disposed” person set fire to a powder magazine that was
located on the bluffs near the penitentiary. Six tons of
powder exploded with a “dull, heavy report,” sending
rocks, some reportedly as large as water pails, flying
toward downtown Alton. The explosion was felt as far
away as St. Louis. Hundreds of Alton residents, thinking
it was an earthquake, hurried toward State Street.
Scarcely a building in Lower Alton was left undamaged.
References
Alton Evening Telegraph, August 11, 1908; January 20, 1912.
Alton Observer, August 10, September 8, 1836; February 9, April
13, May 25, June 29, July 6, August 17, December 28, 1837;
January 24, 1838.
Alton Telegraph, May 11, 1836; July 5, November 8, 22, 1837;
January 24, 1838; July 26, 1839; March 14, 1840; November 13,
1841.
Alton Telegraph & Democratic Review, June 28, 1845.
Bateman, Newton, and Paul Selby. Historical Encyclopedia of
Illinois. Chicago: Munsell Publishing Co., 1926.
Beecher, Edward. Narrative of Riots at Alton. Alton, IL: George
Holton, 1838.
Behymer, Marie. College Avenue Presbyterian Church, 1837–1987.
Alton, IL: College Avenue Presbyterian Church, 1987.
Commercial Bulletin, October 21, 28, November 2, 1835.
Davis Papers. Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Missouri.
Dillon, Merton L. “The Anti-slavery Movement in Illinois,
1809–1844.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1951.
———. Elijah P. Lovejoy, Abolitionist Editor. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1961.
Dugan, Frank. “An Illinois Martyrdom.” In Papers in Illinois
History. Springfield: Illinois State Historical Society, 1939.
Engelke, Georgia M. The Great American Bottom. St. Louis:
C. Sarne Corporation, 1983.
Gill, John. Tide Without Turning. Boston: Starr King Press, 1958.
GM&O Historical Society News, no. 47-48 (1987).
Harris, Newton D. “Negro Servitude in Illinois,” Transactions, no.
11 (1906): 70.
History of Madison County, Illinois. Edwardsville, IL: W. R. Brink &
Co., 1882.
Linder, Usher F. Reminiscences of the Early Bench and Bar in Illinois.
Chicago: The Chicago Legal News Co., 1879.
Lovejoy, Joseph C., and Owen Lovejoy. Memoir of the Rev. Elijah P.
Lovejoy. New York: John S. Taylor, 1838.
Missouri Republican, August 17, 1837.
Norton, W. T., ed. Centennial History of Madison County and Its
People. Chicago and New York: The Lewis Publishing Co., 1912.
Peoria Register and North Western Gazetteer, December 16, 1837.
Simon, Paul. Freedom’s Champion. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1994.
Judy Hoffman is a historian and lifelong Alton/Godfrey resident. She serves on numerous boards and in civic organizations
dedicated to the improvement of the Alton/Godfrey area. Her
book God’s Portion: Godfrey, Illinois 1817-1865 © 2005,
from which this article is excerpted, is available from Cold Tree
Press and Lewis & Clark Community College Foundation.
Hoffman
Spring 2005
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