Alton is a city on the Mississippi River in Madison County, Illinois, United States, about 18 miles (29 km) north of St. Louis, Missouri. The population was 25,676 at the 2020 census. It is a part of the River Bend area in the Metro-East region of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area.
Wendell Phillips was an American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator, and attorney.
Elijah Parish Lovejoy was an American Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor, and abolitionist. After his murder by a mob, he became a martyr to the abolitionist cause opposing slavery in the United States. He was also hailed as a defender of free speech and freedom of the press.
The Lincoln–Douglas debates were a series of seven debates in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. Until the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides that senators shall be elected by the people of their states, was ratified in 1913, senators were elected by their respective state legislatures, so Lincoln and Douglas were trying to win the votes of the state legislature of the two chambers of the Illinois General Assembly meeting at the state capital town of Springfield for their respective political parties.
Lyman Trumbull was an American lawyer, judge, and politician who represented the state of Illinois in the United States Senate from 1855 to 1873. Trumbull was a leading abolitionist attorney and key political ally to Abraham Lincoln and authored several landmark pieces of reform as chair of the Judiciary Committee during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era, including the Confiscation Acts, which created the legal basis for the Emancipation Proclamation; the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished chattel slavery; and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which led to the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Owen Lovejoy was an American lawyer, Congregational minister, abolitionist, and Republican congressman from Illinois. He was also a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. After his brother Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in November 1837 by pro-slavery forces, Owen, a friend of Abraham Lincoln, became a leader of abolitionists in Illinois, condemning slavery and assisting runaway slaves in escaping to freedom.
Thomas Galt was an American Presbyterian minister and abolitionist who organized two Presbyterian churches in Sangamon County, Illinois. He was vice-president of the Illinois Anti-Slavery Society and a conductor of the Underground Railroad.
Winthrop Sargent Gilman was head of the banking house of Gilman, Son & Co. in New York City. Born and raised in Ohio, he had parents and ancestors from New England. Part of the family had already established the banking business in New York. Gilman developed as a businessman in the northwest region with wide interests.
Charles Volney Dyer was a prominent Chicago abolitionist and Stationmaster on the Underground Railroad.
The St. Louis Observer was an abolitionist newspaper established by Elijah Lovejoy, a New England Congregationalist minister, in St. Louis, Missouri. After the newspaper's printing press was destroyed for a third time by a pro-slavery mob, the newspaper was re-located to Alton, Illinois, and renamed the Alton Observer.
The Alton Observer (1837) was an abolitionist newspaper established in Alton, Illinois, by the journalist and newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy after he was forced to flee St. Louis, Missouri. Lovejoy left St. Louis, where he edited the St. Louis Observer, after his printing press was destroyed for the third time.
Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum Address was delivered to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois on January 27, 1838, titled "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions". In his speech, a 28-year-old Lincoln warned that mobs or people who disrespected U.S. laws and courts could destroy the United States. He went on to say the Constitution and rule of law in the United States should be "the political religion of the nation."
The lynching of Francis McIntosh was the killing of a free Black man, a boatman, by a white mob after he was arrested in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 28, 1836. He had fatally stabbed one policeman and injured a second.
Usher Ferguson Linder served as Illinois Attorney General from 1837 until 1839. He was also a private-sector attorney in practice during the early statehood years of Illinois. In several of his cases, he practiced in affiliation with the Springfield, Illinois firm of Lincoln and Herndon and with its circuit partner, Abraham Lincoln.
John Glanville Gill was an American Unitarian minister, scholar in history, and civil rights activist. While working on research for his dissertation about Elijah Parish Lovejoy, an editor and abolitionist, he lived and worked in Alton, Illinois in the mid-1940s. There he worked with other ministers to try to integrate public schools, raise awareness about racial discrimination, and end segregation practices.
Benjamin Godfrey was an American merchant and philanthropist from Massachusetts who is known for his work in the Illinois region. Running away to Ireland at a young age, Godfrey worked on ships in his early life, eventually commanding his own. This vessel was wrecked off the coast of Mexico, but Godfrey found wealth in a trading house in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. However, he was robbed and returned to the U.S. penniless.
David Nelson was an American Presbyterian minister, physician, and antislavery activist who founded Marion College and served as its first president. Marion College, a Protestant manual labor college, was the first institution of higher learning chartered in the state of Missouri. Born in Tennessee, Dr. Nelson had once been a slaveholder but became an "incandescent" abolitionist after hearing a speech by Theodore D. Weld. Unpopular with proslavery groups in northeastern Missouri, Nelson stepped down as president of Marion College in 1835. In 1836, Nelson fled Missouri for Quincy, Illinois, after slaveowner Dr. John Bosely was stabbed at one of his sermons. Nelson then remained in Quincy, where he founded the Mission Institute to educate young missionaries. Openly abolitionist, two Mission Institute sites became well known stations on the Underground Railroad, helping African Americans escape to Canada to be free from slavery.
Thomas Dimmock (1830-1909) was an American journalist, editorial writer, book reviewer, critic and lecturer. He was responsible for restoring the Alton, Illinois, grave of free-press martyr Elijah Parish Lovejoy, who was shot and killed by a pro-slavery mob in 1837.
Joseph Cammett Lovejoy (1805–1871) was a clergyman, activist, and author. He was an abolitionist, and was also involved in the debate over liquor laws. His siblings included Elijah Parish Lovejoy and Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864). He wrote Memoir of Charles T. Torrey about Charles T. Torrey. who died in a Maryland penitentiary after being sentenced for aiding African Americans trying to escape slavery on the Underground Railroad and co-wrote with his brother Owen the memoir of their murdered brother Elijah.
John R. Anderson, also known as J. Richard Anderson, was an American minister from St. Louis, Missouri, who fought against slavery and for education for African Americans. As a boy, he was an indentured servant, who attained his freedom at the age of 12. Anderson worked as a typesetter for the Missouri Republican and for Elijah Parish Lovejoy's anti-slavery newspaper, the Alton Observer. He founded the Antioch Baptist Church in Brooklyn, Illinois and then returned to St. Louis where he was a co-founder and the second pastor of the Central Baptist Church. He served the church until his death in 1863.
