At the warehouse of Godfrey, Gilman & Co. at the foot of William Street in Alton, Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy tried to defend his abolitionist newspaper, The Observer, after moving it from St. Louis in hopes of a friendlier setting in the free state of Illinois. Because sentiment toward slavery in southern Illinois was generally favorable, much of the local population opposed Lovejoy's views and repeatedly destroyed his presses by throwing them into the Mississippi River. After three presses were lost, Lovejoy and about eighteen supporters armed themselves and barricaded the warehouse to protect a fourth press. A mob demanded its surrender, gunfire followed, and after one of the attackers, Peter Brown, was killed, the crowd tried to burn the roof. When Lovejoy stepped from an upper floor window to fire at the arsonists, he was shot five times. The defenders then surrendered the press, which was destroyed and thrown into the river. Lovejoy was buried the next day on his thirty-fifth birthday, and news of his death quickly energized the abolitionist movement across the country, where he was hailed by Wendell Phillips at Boston's Faneuil Hall as a martyr to freedom of the press.
