Elijah Lovejoy was the son of a congressional minister, born in Albion, Maine on November 9, 1802. He graduated from the Waterville College in 1826 and then moved to St. Louis, Missouri. There he established a school, and then attended the Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1834 Lovejoy became the pastor of a Presbyterian Church of St. Louis.
Soon after he started a religious newspaper called the St. Louis Observer. It gained recognition when he worte the full account of a lynching of an African-American man and subsequent trial of the mob leaders who were acquitted of all charges. This report angered the mob and in July of 1836, they destroyed the press.
After this incident he was no longer able to print his papers in St. Louis anymore and so he moved to Alton, Illinois. There he became an active member of the Anti-Slavery Society. He then began writing the Alton Observer, continuing his mission to advocate the end of slavery.
On three different occasions Lovejoy's printing press was seized and thrown into the Mississippi River. Each time he bought a new one to continue his abolitionist writings. Finally on November 7th, 1837, as the mob was trying once again to seize his printing press, he and his friends fought back and Elijah Lovejoy was shot and killed in the process. He was the first martyr to freedom of the press.
Through the way he lived his life, Elijah Lovejoy showed tremendous faith. It took extreme courage to speak up against the evils of slavery but he did it anyway knowing the risks involved. And when the mob continued to destroy his printing presses, he would not back down and kept regaining new ones to keep up the anti-slavery movement, because he knew this was the right thing to do. Elijah Lovejoy may be the best example of a person of faith in the times of slavery in the United States.