by Ken Ellingwood
Ken Ellingwood, a former Los Angeles Times correspondent now living in Abu Dhabi, is the author of First to Fall,
a forthcoming book about Elijah Lovejoy.
Wood engraving of November 7, 1837 mob attack in Alton, IL. Antislavery publisher Elijah Lovejoy was killed and his press, hidden in this warehouse, was destroyed, with the pieces thrown into the Mississippi River.
It was gratifying that Rep. Jamie Raskin would invoke an obscure 19th century newspaper editor while laying out the impeachment case charging President Trump with incitement in the brutal January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The editor was Elijah Lovejoy, whose slaying at the hands of a proslavery mob in 1837 encapsulated a chilling wave of political violence that Abraham Lincoln, then an Illinois lawmaker, condemned as “mob law.”