‘Though I may speak with bravest fire …’

“Mr. Chairman, what have I to compromise? If freely to forgive those who have so greatly injured me, if to pray for their temporal and eternal happiness, if still to wish for the prosperity of your city and state—not withstanding all the indignities I have suffered in it—if this be the compromise intended, then do I willingly make it. My rights have been shamefully, wickedly outraged; this I know, and feel, and can never forget. But I can and do freely forgive those who have done it.

“But if by a compromise is meant that I should cease from doing that which duty requires of me, I cannot make it. And the reason is that I fear God more than I fear man. Think not that I would lightly go contrary to public sentiment around me. The good opinion of my fellow men is dear to me, and I would sacrifice anything but principle to obtain their good wishes; but when they ask me to surrender this, they ask for more than I can—(more) than I dare give.”

Elijah Lovejoy was addressing a seven-member committee formed purportedly to seek a compromise to restore harmony and good fellowship in the troubled community of Alton, Ill. But from his perspective—and as the horrifying events that soon unfolded attest—the group had “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.”

Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister and newspaper editor, was America’s first martyr for freedom of the press. Recently a fellow Baptist journalist sent to me a copy of “Freedom’s Champion: Elijah Lovejoy,” in which former U.S. Senator Paul Simon recounts events that led to Lovejoy’s murder. Facing mounting opposition for his increasingly stronger anti-slavery views as editor of the St. Louis Observer, Lovejoy moved his paper across the Mississippi River to Alton. Pro-slavery mobs there continued to harass and dismantled his printing presses—even tossing them into the river.

Lovejoy’s defiant stance, Simon explains, was due to deeply-held convictions. “Lovejoy’s fight was a struggle to make his faith something more than a repetition of words,” he maintains. “Religion to him was more than well-placed bricks and stained-glass windows. Conventional Christianity … which hears comforting sermons but does not wish to disturb, would have no ally in Elijah Lovejoy.” In his last speech, Lovejoy resolutely accepted his fate: “Think not that I regret the choice I have made. While all around me is violence and tumult, all is peace within. … No, sir, I am not unhappy. I have counted the cost, and stand prepared freely to offer up all in the service of God.”

In the early hours of Nov. 7, 1837—two days shy of his 35th birthday—Lovejoy and a small band of supporters unsuccessfully attempted to guard a fourth press. An angry mob, which included many of the town’s leading citizens, attacked a warehouse where the press was stored. Lovejoy was shot five times.

Lest we dismiss Lovejoy as an argumentative, crusader sort, Simon quotes Samuel Willard: “Mr. Lovejoy was a gentle man always. His firmness was not that of passion and obstinacy, but the gentle persistence of one who felt that he was right. There was no bitterness in his heart, no venom in his tongue, no sound of fury in his voice.” Rev. Edward Beecher, who prayed with Lovejoy four days before his death, recalled, “How he prayed especially for the best good of the community in which he dwelt!”

Simon charges: “The people who really killed Lovejoy were not those who fired the bullets but ‘middle of the road’ straddlers, most of them honorable people in the community. They were all the clean, decent, honest people who stayed neutral between the two opposing forces and who were too timid to stand and be counted. They were the people who said they ‘could see both sides to the question,’ who did nothing … . They made it possible for others to aim the guns and pull the triggers.”

Standing at Lovejoy’s graveside, an unsettling query arose: At what length would we have the same courage to resolutely express our convictions, even though they may be unpopular? At what peril would we, as Baptists, defend another’s right to express differing viewpoints or religious perspectives? Today, Alton is perhaps better known as the birthplace of another gentle giant, Robert Wadlow, who grew to be 8’11” by age 22. As I later stood beside his statue, I contemplated if one’s stature is best measured not in inches of height but in the depth of one’s faith and fortitude.

Western Recorder issue date: August 31, 2010