Narrative of Riots at Alton

"Sometime after ten o'clock Monday night, November 7, 1837, Elijah P. Lovejoy, abolitionist editor and Presbyterian minister, was shot five times and killed while defending the press of his newspaper, the Alton Observer, from an insensate Illinois mob. When the news of his murder spread to the East during the next two weeks, the country overflowed with passion. Those who lived through it testify that no other personal incident of the antislavery struggle, save the hanging of John Brown on the eve of the Civil War, so overwhelmed the North. Funeral sermons poured from the pulpits; public memorials and resolutions flooded the papers. At a mass meeting to mourn Lovejoy in Boston, Wendell Phillips was moved to make his famous leap onto the stage of Fanueil Hall and into history as the most exciting agitator of his time. Edward Beecher's dramatic narrative -- now reprinted for the first time in many years -- is an eyewitness account of the events leading to Lovejoy's murder. It is recognized as an historical document of primary importance to the study of the bitter struggle over the issue of slavery and of the complexity of the American consciousness in the years leading to the Civil War"--Back cover