No. of Recommendations: 7
The following AI text popped up when I googled the name “Elijah Lovejoy”. Strangely, it was a smmary that I was pretty much looking to construct myself, but it’s accurate, so I’m printing as is:
Elijah Lovejoy, a presbyterian minister, journalist, and newspaper editor, was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, on November 7, 1837. The mob attacked a warehouse where he had stored his printing press, intending to destroy it.
While the mob itself was directly responsible for the attack and his death, no individual was ever convicted of his murder. There were trials for those involved in the attack, but conflicts of interest within the court system led to "not guilty" verdicts. One of the defendants, Gilman, was found not guilty, and charges against the other eleven were dismissed. In a separate trial regarding the destruction of the warehouse and Lovejoy's death, the jury found it impossible to assign individual responsibility and also returned a "not guilty" verdict. The judge in the case even suggested that Lovejoy's publications were partly to blame for the violence.
The assassination of Lovejoy, a prominent voice for abolition, is seen as a significant event in the fight against slavery and the struggle for freedom of the press in the United States. Abraham Lincoln, then a young State Representative, publicly condemned Lovejoy's murder as an attack on the law and the nation's liberty. Abolitionist John Brown was deeply affected by Lovejoy's death and dedicated his life to ending slavery.
Every political murder provides its own unique horror, but it seems we are circling back around to a former time in our country’s history when political assassination/murders were increasinly commonplace
Elijah Lovejoy was a firebrand abolitionist. No doubt about it. He first set up his newspaper in strife torn Missouri, but several instances of mob violence chased him across the river to Alton IL. But the mob followed him and he was finally burned out and killed in 1837.
All defendants went scott free at the murder trial, and the judge even opined that Lovejoy brought the disaster on himself by writing what he did.
The AI summary I quoted mentions two young men who took note. As yet, they were unknown, but soon would be household names in this country.
Lovejoy came to my mind in the day or two following the political assassination of MN State Senator Melissa Hortman and her husband, as well as the serious wounding of MN State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. (Between the two of them, doctors removed seventeen bullets).
It’s said that history rhymes. Perhaps it won’t rhyme in one important detail- that the shooter in MN is pretty much cooked, and probably won’t be getting off.
But I’m thinking of that Judge and his words about Lovejoy bringing disaster on himself by daring to write against slavery…. And how that message dovetails with right wing nonsense about WOKE! and DEI! and CRT! And how the right has created an atmosphere in which political violence is being seen as the next logical step by some….. J6 insurrectionists, Paul Pelosi’s attacker, and now this tragedy in MN.
The proof that the right is not taking this violence seriously is seen in their response to Hortman’s murder. Immediately the right wing propaganda machine began cranking out falsehoods about who committed the murder. Elon Musk and US Senator Mike Lee began posting nonsense about the shooter being a leftie. The charge was picked up and rebroadcast here at shrew’d. And almost the entire body of Republican CongressCritters- both House and Senate remained silent when voices of condemnation were called for.
It’s almost as if they approved of the violence…..
Somewhere out there- some young men and women are watching, and taking note. We may not even know who they are for another decade or two.
But history has a way of raising up leaders at precisely the same time as everyone else sees only empty benches.
Interesting times
