(Monument Image from The Great Rivers & Routes of Southwest Illinois)

The Unapologetic Defender

(10 minute read)

Key Takeaways:

• What we stand for must be actively defended. Belief without action is just sentiment — real conviction sometimes demands a cost.
• Fear is often at the root of injustice. Understanding what drives division makes it easier to confront, and harder to be consumed by.
• Our contradictions don’t disqualify us. A country — or a person — can understand opposing truths and still move forward. That tension is part of the journey.
• History is an invitation, not just a record. The stories of those who came before us are asking something of us. The question is whether we’re willing to answer.

Maxim #1: See the world as it is and not as you would like it to be

Maxim #2: See the world as you would like it to be and not as it is

Living in a World of Contradictions

Philosophy, psychology, and sociology are often described as soft sciences. With long and intertwined histories, they seek to explain how humans interpret, interact with, and make sense of the world. The major world religions share this enduring tradition as well.

I have formally studied religion and philosophy over a lifetime. At the risk of sounding too simplistic, it appears that there are two types of reality described by the two maxims above.

The first seems to encourage us to be realists and look at the world as it really is. The second seems to encourage us to reject that notion and create the world we want to live in. They seem contradictory. But just the opposite may be true. They may actually be complimentary.

Read together, they form not a contradiction but a challenge — to hold both truths at once. See the world clearly, with all its failures and fault lines, and then refuse to accept that this is all it can be. The realist in you names what is broken. The idealist in you insists on something better. That insistence — stubborn, sometimes inconvenient, occasionally dangerous — is where change has always begun.

Valor, Devotion, and Sacrifice

“I cannot surrender my principles, though the whole world besides should vote them down — I can make no compromise between truth and error, even though my life be the alternative.”

–Elijah P. Lovejoy, in a public meeting in Alton, Illinois on Oct. 24, 1837 and reported in the Spirit of Jefferson newspaper

In Alton, Illinois, an eleven-story monument stands as a testament to the life and work of Elijah P. Lovejoy. The likelihood that you’ve heard of him is slim. But his life influences us to this day.

Born in 1802 in Albion, Maine, Lovejoy was the eldest of nine children. His father was a farmer and Congregational minister who, along with his wife, made education a cornerstone of family life. All nine children learned to read and write before setting foot in a public school — Elijah among the first.

After completing his public school studies, Lovejoy attended private academies in Maine before enrolling at Waterville College. He graduated as class valedictorian in 1826 and began to teach. A year later, restlessness got the better of him — he headed west and eventually settled in St. Louis.

Unable to find steady work, he established a private academy with a friend. That, too, failed to hold his interest — until a local newspaper began purchasing his poems. In 1829, he accepted a position as co-editor of the St. Louis Times, owned by a consortium of like-minded business leaders.

In 1829, slavery was a highly contentious issue. In that same year two events stoked the debate; the publication of David Walker’s Appeal, a radical abolitionist pamphlet written by free African American living in Boston, and the country of Mexico — a frequent destination for escaping American slaves — officially abolished the practice.

Walker’s pamphlet concerned slave-owners and helped spark strict new anti-literacy laws across the South. The abolition of slavery in Mexico established a shorter lesser-known southern route of the Underground Railroad, declaring that any enslaved person became a free citizen the moment they stepped onto Mexican soil.

Although Missouri was a slave state, St. Louis residents did not see themselves as bound to Southern slavery. They considered themselves progressives — keepers of the great gateway to the West.

It was during this tumultuous period that Lovejoy’s political clarity began to sharpen. 

And, yet, he still felt uneasy. Wrestling with his faith, he wrote long confessional letters to his parents about his failings. Desperately seeking answers, he attended a revival meeting — and left feeling that the religion of his youth had been reawakened.

Lovejoy Retreats Only to Return

Selling his interest in the Times, Lovejoy moved East to study theology at Princeton, graduating in 1833 and relocating to Philadelphia, where he became minister of the local Presbyterian Church — though not for long.

That same year, a group of St. Louis citizens sought to establish a religious newspaper and implored Lovejoy to return and lead it. He accepted, moved back, and published the first edition of the St. Louis Observer that fall.

At the time, over 60% of St. Louis’ population was Catholic. Founders of the Observer were concerned about undue Catholic influence in the community, and the paper took a critical stance toward the Church — eventually broadening that criticism to include the institution of slavery.

Lovejoy led the charge with scores of articles skewering both institutions. His opinion pieces were deeply polarizing, fueling political discourse that gradually divided the community.

In the spring of 1835, a rival paper, The Missouri Republican, caught Lovejoy’s attention. It was strongly advocating for the gradual emancipation of all slaves. Lovejoy echoed the sentiment, urging antislavery groups in Missouri to push even harder. He had written cautiously on the subject before — but this moment emboldened him.

“Christians,” he wrote, must “recognize that slaves were human beings who possessed a soul.”

It’s unsettling to think that someone had to spell that out.

Merging his moral and religious convictions, Lovejoy had found his voice. But his fervency was met with fierce pushback. By the fall of 1835, death threats against him and his family were a daily occurrence.

After publishing an editorial condemning the burning of a Black man by a lynch mob, the threats intensified. Lovejoy moved his family and the Observer’s operations out of St. Louis, relocating some 20 miles north to Alton, Illinois, and renamed the paper the Alton Observer.

Now fully embracing the cause, Lovejoy continued his full-throated editorials — calling on all citizens of Illinois, a free state, to join in ending slavery.

But a group of Alton business owners began to resent him and the Observer for casting Alton as a radical abolitionist hub. Already struggling to recover from the financial Panic of 1837, they accused him of disrupting trade ties with pro-slavery merchants in the neighboring South.

The Standoff

In fact, Lovejoy had nothing to do with the financial crisis. The collapse triggered a credit freeze, halted steamboat trade, and severely damaged economies along the Mississippi River and throughout the South.

Lovejoy and his paper were being scapegoated.

On November 7, 1837, a mob of pro-slavery men gathered outside one of the Observer’s printing houses. Lovejoy and several staff members were inside. The mob demanded to speak with him. After he refused, gunshots rang out — and were returned from inside.

After several volleys, a moment of calm settled and the conflict seemed to be over. Lovejoy opened the door and was immediately met with a hail of gunfire. Five bullets struck his body; he died within minutes, becoming the first American journalist martyr. The following day, he was buried in an unmarked grave in Alton Cemetery.

Lovejoy’s death sent ripples through the abolitionist movement, bringing outrage and renewed energy to the cause.

His brother Owen, who had witnessed his brothers demise, vowed to continue the cause. He became the leader of the Illinois abolitionists and, in 1854, was elected to the state legislature. There he rose to prominence and forged political alliances — among them a friendship with an up-and-coming lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln often referenced Lovejoy’s sacrifice, publicly and privately. In a personal letter to his friend James Lemen in 1857, Lincoln wrote:

“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.”

The American Civil War followed for four grueling years from 1861 to 1865.

In 1864, St. Louis journalist Thomas Dimmick — captivated by Lovejoy’s story — tracked down the original unmarked grave, by then buried beneath a road. The remains were exhumed and relocated, and Dimmick arranged for a proper headstone.

In 1896, a memorial was commissioned at Lovejoy’s final resting place. It reads:

“This monument commemorates the valor, devotion and sacrifice of the noble Defenders of the Press, who, in this city, on Nov. 7, 1837, made the first armed resistance to the aggressions of the slave power in America.” 

History Is For Now: It Is Who We Are

I’ve spent time and space writing about Lovejoy’s story because it’s just as important as ever. 

History carries some of the most vital events we will ever encounter — and some of the most important ones slip through the cracks of time, forgotten. Whether we remember them or not, history tells us who we are and how we got here.

The saying that history is “living and breathing” is exactly for stories like this. The “old” stories become part of our understanding of the world. When they align with our own, it’s hard not to be aware that we’re truly living history. It’s hard not to draw parallels between the polarization of Lovejoy’s era and our own. 

Some may or may not be willing to admit that they are part of any “aggressions of the slave power.” Yet a White nationalist movement, a minority of Americans, today proudly align themselves with tyranny against other minorities — and call themselves patriots for doing so.

• The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017
• The Johnstown, PA couple cited in a 2017 Politico article that the NFL really stood for “Ni****s For Life”
• The January 6, 2020 insurrection of the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
• The politician who wills for the death of democracy in the U.S. because of their own ambitions

By the year 2045 it is projected that White’s will no longer be the majority race in America and it appears to scare the hell out of those suffering from white extinction anxiety.

For some Americans, the prospect of any group other than Whites becoming the majority is unacceptable. This small minority of people acts as if it represents the majority, using its influence to suppress other minority groups.

In a CNN interview, authors Steve Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt discuss this phenomenon. Their latest book. “Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point” is vital for providing clarity about the times we are living in.

“Given the numbers in this country, the only way to not empower the emerging multiracial majority in this country is through nondemocratic means. For many years in this country, prior to 1965 [when the Voting Rights Act was passed] when the demographics were different, we had what we called a democracy. But it was not providing rights and protection to all members of the community. It’s only in 1965 that we started to have this conversation about a true multiracial democracy.”

–Steve Lavitsky, CNN interview, Dec. 8, 2023 [retrieved Mar. 21, 2024]

For more than half a century, most Americans viewed the United States as a functioning democracy. It was never perfect — it has never been perfect. Yet many of us have lived long enough to recognize the progress that was made.

Like Lovejoy in his day, most citizens now see democracy being supplanted by something far uglier — leaving them to fight for the world they want rather than accept the world they see.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his 1936 essay, The Crack-Up:

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. To see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

The dichotomy of living in two seemingly opposite realities is the reality. But that makes many of us very uncomfortable. We would rather live with the certainty.

The truth is our country is, and always has been, filled with dichotomies. Some include our political divisions, socio-economic gaps, and historical constraints regarding civil rights like freedom of speech. 

One explanation lies in the very foundation of America — the great melting pot, where citizens share no common origin story. Instead, we are unified by an ideological doctrine: the Constitution. Our identity is rooted there, rather than in a shared history.

Whichever maxim we agree with — one, two, or both — for Lovejoy, the solution meant seeing the world as it was, and working for the world as it ought to be. He spent his life doing exactly that.

You and I may never have to make that ultimate sacrifice, but we can be inspired to make the world we’d like to see. And when you do, remember the example of Elijah P. Lovejoy and act without any apologies.

Editor’s note: This essay was originally titled Living History: The Unapologetic Defender, Parts 1-2. It was published from 4/5-5/2, 2024. It has been condensed and edited for clarity and continuity.