Talk:Elijah Parish Lovejoy

Untitled
I've again removed the photo. It is not Elijah Lovejoy.

For the last couple of years, I've been using the fact that I was able to delete Lovejoy's photo here immediately while the vetting process meant that Britannica had it on their online site for two or three months before correcting it (after I brought it to their attention), not to mention the fact that of course our 2003 print edition *still* has it, as an example of how Wikipedia can be better than Encyclopedia Britannica. I find it very discouraging to discover that had been re-linked without even an addition to the discussion page giving a reason for it.

THE PHOTO LABELED "ELIJAH LOVEJOY" IS NOT ELIJAH LOVEJOY. It is probably a photo of Owen Lovejoy. There are no photos of Elijah, and if one were discovered it would be a photo of tremendous importance to the history of photography, as he died several years before the first known photo of a living human being. Original discussion below under "Fake Photo" but I'm putting this up top to help keep it from happening again. Steve Bolhafner 19:30, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

---

I am uncertain about that picture. I have also seen it as a picture of Lovejoy's brother, Owen. And it looks like a photograph, which is effectively out of the question for someone who died in 1837.

I came across an interesting detail in an old Finnish anti-slavery book that I don't consider a source reputable enough to add straight away: His gravesite went unmarked for a long time, and when he got a monument it had the words "jam parce sepulto" (spare these remains), a fitting thing on the grave of someone who was mobbed to death. A Google search gives good-looking references, but a very small number of them. --Kizor 18:43, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Fake photograph
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre invented the first practical process for making photographs, from which all modern photography follows. He announced his invention to the world in 1839.

There cannot possibly be a photograph of Elijah P. Lovejoy, who died in 1837.

I'm a news librarian at a newspaper that ran a correction today because someone here pulled this photo off the article and ran it in the paper.

I'm removing the photo from the article so this doesn't happen to anyone else.


 * How did you discover that this is via Spartacus Educational? Sj 23:49, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Wow. A reporter used an unsourced low-res image from the Wikipedia for an article? How sloppy. Note to reporters - never, ever use the Wikipedia as a source. Dan Lovejoy 22:57, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Wow. A Wikipedian who doesn't know not to use the direct article with the "Wikipedia" title.  Don't use Wikipedia as a final source, or as a cite; surely.  But as a guide to further investigation... Sj 23:49, 29 December 2005 (UTC)    Also, please update the talk page of the image itself if you discover the true origins or subject of that image.


 * Will do. Sorry for not signing my comment -- my first time here as a contributor, and I didn't know the etiquette. On the other points: I don't know for sure that it came from Spartacus Educational, but the person who first put it up in 2003 also linked to that site, and it does have the same photo. I'm trying to get in touch with them, but in order to send John Simkin e-mail you first have to sign up for an account there and be approved. And the mistake was made by a page designer, I believe. Or someone at the picture desk. Not a reporter in any case. We've already sent a memo around to the newsroom about how to properly use Wikipedia. Sbolhafner 16:24, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Later add: Here's what I put on the image talk page: Encyclopaedia Britannica (print edition - 2003) has same photo in their Elijah Lovejoy entry and credits it to Library of Congress; no such photo in online archive there but it may be from some offline source. A fellow librarian discovered this photo is used on the cover of a book about Owen Lovejoy, Elijah's brother who took up his work after he was killed. Local group called Lovejoy Society cannot positively confirm but does agree that this is probably a photo of Owen Lovejoy. Sbolhafner 21:13, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 11:26, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

This article is in desperate need of citations
It links to some sketchy-looking sites and a "The article requested can not be found" page. The only Google results I can find on this "French-American General Girin" character are about his relationship with Lovejoy and are copied from this page. Can anyone prove this guy actually existed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.195.151.84 (talk) 21:23, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

nevermind.. fixed itself


 * The following source, written my my great-grandfather, might provide some citations for the article. I do not own a copy, and have not seen the book itself in over 40 years. W. T. Norton was a son of Rev. A. T. Norton, a Presbyterian preacher in Alton at the time of Lovejoy's murder. Chapter VII is apparently about the anti-slavery issue.


 * Norton, W. T. Centennial History of Madison County, Illinois and Its People. Chicago, 1912.


 * Snezzy (talk) 00:25, 29 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I have located online the "History of the Presbyterian church, in the state of Illinois" by Reverend A. T. Norton, my great-great-grandfather. It contains a tremendous amount of material about Lovejoy. It can be found here:
 * https://archive.org/details/historyofpresb00nort/page/247/mode/1up
 * I do not have the time or the gumption to do anything with it.
 * Snezzy (talk) 02:47, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Lead paragraph, 2 items
I see the article is under recent editing, so I won't jump in and make the changes. Not to pick nits, but: (1) perhaps a different word might be used to describe his killing, rather than "murdered", which is a legal term, and isn't accurate without a legal provenance ... using a legal term inaccurately (even if it's colloquially correct) degrades the quality of an encyclopedia article; and (2) regarding the phrase "lynching of a free black man", inclusion of the word "free" is irrelevant to the point and is (without intent) obnoxiously superfluous. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 02:27, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Lead paragraph, 2 items - Comment
You are nitpicking. 1. "Murder" is a perfectly accurate term to describe terminal violence executed without legal justification or authority. The mob doubtlessly embodied the town's majority sentiment when they murdered him, but they did not do so under any legal justification or civil authority. You could say the word "murder" is NPOV, as it has implies a moral value judgment. But I think most sensible people would be comfortable with that, since by all accounts he was murdered defending his own property. 2. The phrase "lynching of a free black man" is in fact a useful description. The word "free" describes him as not being a slave. If they had lynched a slave they could be held legally and/or financially liable for destruction of private property unless the owner consented. But a "free" black man lived soley on the surrounding community's good intentions, which were lost when he was accused of murder. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.138.41.10 (talk) 13:35, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Lede is too detailed
The lede is quite long and detailed considering the overall length of this article. It also contains content that is not in the body of the article - will edit to make it conform to Wiki standards. Parkwells (talk) 20:58, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Too Small
You should put more information about Lovejoys marriage in the marriage column. I personally think that one or two sentences could NEVER be good for a section unless absolutely necessary. If not, please put it inside another section somewhere instead of making a separate section. BillySM64 (User talk:BillySM64[talk) 6:05, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Article should mention the connection between Lovejoy's death and John Brown's radical declaration
In the Wikipedia article on John Brown, there is this sentence: In 1837, in response to the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy, Brown publicly vowed: “Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery!”

This is significant. I do not know if Brown knew Lovejoy, or if he simply found this to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Since many historians seem to think that Brown's radical acts and Harper's Ferry, in particular, had much to do with the Civil War, given the fear by Southerners that his raid was merely the first of many insurrections to come, I think this stimulus of Lovejoy's death is worth noting in the article.

Jeffrey M. FischerFisje01 (talk) 15:13, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Removing lede-rewrite request
The lede seems to me to summarise the article very adequately. I assume that other people have edited the lede since the request was posted. Valetude (talk) 16:30, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like a fundraiser
"The family continues to be active in social justice issues, especially modern abolition: Martha Lovejoy is a supervisor in the U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, which coordinates the United States Government's efforts to combat modern forms of slavery."

What are we selling here? 194.230.214.119 (talk) 06:18, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Uncited content
To track and hopefully get sources for uncited / possibly original research content:

From the first paragraph of the St. Louis section:
 * A major port in a slave state surrounded by free ones, St. Louis was a center of both abolitionist and pro-slavery factions. From 1814 to 1860, more than three hundred freedom suits were filed by slaves to gain freedom, often based on their having lived in free territory with their masters. At the same time, it was an area where both free Blacks and slaves worked in the city, especially on the waterfront and steamboats.
 * –CaroleHenson (talk) 07:49, 7 June 2021 (UTC)


 * , Hello. I hope you're having a great day today. I searched through history to see if there was ever a citation for this information and I see that you added the content in this version, I am not seeing a source, though. Do you by chance have an idea where this may have come from?–CaroleHenson (talk) 16:50, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes - There is an entire article about freedom suits and the role of St. Louis in the region, as well as articles about some of the more notable freedom suits argued and won in St. Louis. The background and content come from the Circuit Courts in the city, where some 300 suits were found in the 1990s and material developed by the Missouri Historical Society and Missouri State Archives.  Another source in the national Freedom Suit article, added after I had worked on it, likely has detailed info: Parkwells (talk) 17:34, 7 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Excellent, thanks! ✅ I have added it back to the article with the first 3 sources. I am not understanding the last source with a page needed tag - i.e., if we don't know the page number, how do we know what was covered by that source. And, I see it is a dissertation.–CaroleHenson (talk) 18:08, 7 June 2021 (UTC)


 * It was used as a source in the main Freedom suit article. I said here it appears to be cover the content in St. Louis and Alton. Editors are supposed to use page cites from books or dissertations, but there are numerous cites that are not that specific. It was my understanding that WIKI MOS allowed the use of dissertations, given the extensive peer review they undergo. I was not the one to add it to the enlarged Freedom suit article, but apparently it was accepted, as it is still there.Parkwells (talk) 18:34, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that dissertations shouldn't be used unless they are published (or have otherwise received significant influence). See WP:SCHOLARSHIP, particularly the third bullet.


 * It seems we have different opinions about using sources that cannot be verified. I have been told that if content and citations are copied from another article, that should be mentioned in the edit summary for tracking purposes.–CaroleHenson (talk) 18:44, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * You're welcome to delete it from both articles. I did not use it myself, only suggested it this time around. I'm not going to start editing Freedom suit today, and don't have more time to spend on Lovejoy's article. Do not have a strong opinion about the dissertation.Parkwells (talk) 19:21, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll put it as an External link. Twitty's dissertation, prepared at Princeton U under supervision of Christine Stansell, is based on the freedom suit records found in the St Louis Circuit Court, and bears directly on slavery and freedom suits in the St Louis area, as can be seen by the preview and chapter discussion on ProQuest. Parkwells (talk) 21:44, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay. I should have been clearer - I am not looking to change anything in this article as the result of these comments (and absolutely not in another article), I was saying where I am coming from. It helps me to see where I need to tighten up - and others where it's ok to loosen up. My take is that I feel pretty much the same, but I will be more open to dissertations based upon the guideline (that I haven't read in awhile).–CaroleHenson (talk) 02:28, 8 June 2021 (UTC)


 * , Thanks so much for the copy edits!–CaroleHenson (talk) 17:30, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Glad to help.Parkwells (talk) 19:21, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

From the Mob attack and death section:
 * The leaders of the mob set up a ladder against the warehouse. They sent a boy up with a torch to set fire to the wooden roof. Lovejoy and his supporter Royal Weller went outside, surprised the pro-slavery partisans, pushed over the ladder and retreated back inside the warehouse. The mob put up the ladder again; when Lovejoy and Weller went out to overturn it, they were spotted and shot. Lovejoy was hit five times with slugs from a shotgun and died immediately; Weller was wounded. The mob destroyed the new printing press by carrying it to a window and throwing it out onto the riverbank. They broke it up and threw the pieces into the river.
 * –CaroleHenson (talk) 09:07, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Will have to look at this further to find out where the source got separated. Parkwells (talk) 17:34, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * That would be great! I looked through the history and the article was a pretty big mess where the ladders were discussed years ago. I gave up, because the user wasn't adding sources and it seems to have been an IP user. I added a bit more to the mob attack section - like that he died during the attack and that seems to be fine in the meantime.–CaroleHenson (talk) 18:11, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * According to the marker memorial article on Waymarking, it looks as if this mostly comes from a contemporary article in the Alton Observer, which was referred to in Lovejoy's article.
 * It was paraphrased from an Alton Observer article of Nov. 7, 1837, published the day of Lovejoy's death (a previous version of this WP article said, "According to the Alton Observer, blah-blah"); the whole Alton Observer article is included in External links at the bottom of the main Lovejoy article page here.Parkwells (talk) 19:13, 7 June 2021 (UTC)


 * CaroleHenson, thanks for all your work on this. It is hard to wade into an article with so many editors over time, especially, as you say, when some work from IP addresses. I hope these changes/adds help.Parkwells (talk) 19:57, 7 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Yes, your copy edits were excellent! Thanks so much. I reads so much more smoothly now.–CaroleHenson (talk) 21:15, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Recent copy edits
, Thanks very much for the recent copy edits, the article looks really good now.

There is one sentence without a citation: "Gilman and some other supporters were prosecuted for riot, but charges were dismissed."

Is there a source for this?–CaroleHenson (talk) 22:56, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, you're so good - I put that in as a marker - had come across a case file for Gilman, Henry Tanner and others and now have to find it again. Will follow up. Was reading further about Gilman and Tanner, and have not finished. Also, I agree with your not adding back the material about the attack on the warehouse. After looking at the article now, I find it more interesting to think about how Lovejoy developed. How did he go from hobnobbing with the top lawyers (Bates and Gamble brothers) and ACS supporters to being so strongly anti-slavery? There was so much going on in the city, a relatively a small place. At one time I did more research on the freedom suits (and some related individual articles) and the attorneys who participated in defending petitioners. Parkwells (talk) 16:06, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Cool. I am so glad that you are working on this article based upon your areas of interest and focus. Great points and great question. The varying motivations of those supporting the colonization movement are interesting and sad.–CaroleHenson (talk) 18:18, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

List of defendants at trial
The Alton Telegraph article (cite added today) had a list of defenders of the warehouse, including the owner W.S. Gilman, and also a list of people being prosecuted as attackers. The former included at least one other minister than Lovejoy, and Henry Tanner, noted as an abolitionist. Do you think it is useful to include these two lists? May suggest something about the communities there. (Or may be TMI - it is available if people want to read sources.)Parkwells (talk) 00:46, 11 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I think it depends on how long the list is, per WP:ISNOT, and whether there are noteworthy people in the list. As a side comment, if I am wanting to add content that might not be appropriate for the body of the article, I put it into a note.


 * So glad to be able to bounce questions off of one another... I had one today that I was thinking of running by you.–CaroleHenson (talk) 01:02, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

St. Louis Times
There was an edit that removed the wikilink from the St. Louis Times - with the edit summary of "This link goes to a different newspaper than the one described in the sentence, so I deleted it."


 * I think that there was confusion between the times when he was affiliated with the Times and the Observer. This link helps clarify it.–CaroleHenson (talk) 01:22, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Content Area Literacy
— Assignment last updated by Gmtz81902 (talk) 19:22, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Recent edit to legacy section
I see that the following information was added and deleted:
 * The Alton campaign to end free speech (1836–1838) culminated on November 7, 1837 with the mob murder of abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Founder/ Editor of The Alton Observer. Lovejoy’s murder was covered in newspapers nationwide[1] leading to a rise in membership in abolitionist societies. By 1840 more than 15,000 people were members of abolitionist societies in the United States.[2]

with the comment "Removed badly worded information with malformed sources"


 * Regarding the sources, did you mean to use the 1st and 2nd sources in the Reference section? If no, what do [1] and [2] mean?
 * I see that you have a link to a non-existent page Alton campaign to end free speech (1836–1838), but there is a page Alton Campaign vs. Free Speech (1836-38) which is being considered for deletion
 * Now the key item, the actual verbiage. Once the sources are identified/confirmed, I think that the wording could be updated to something like:
 * The press coverage of Lovejoy being killed by a mob led to a rise in membership in abolitionist societies. By 1840, more than 15,000 people were members of abolitionist societies in the United States.

What do you think?–CaroleHenson (talk) 21:05, 22 July 2023 (UTC)


 * If the AfD decision is to "Keep" Alton Campaign vs. Free Speech (1836-38), it could be added as a See also at the bottom of one of the sections, perhaps the "Mob attack and death" section.–CaroleHenson (talk) 21:08, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I would definitely support a sentence like that being added to the article, my main concern was that the information had been merged from Alton Campaign vs. Free Speech (1836-38) but that the sources hadn't been added to this page's references, meaning the info for a pretty grand claim wasn't verifiable. The source on that page for the relevant info is the The Young People's Encyclopedia of the United States from 1993. Devonian Wombat (talk) 00:06, 23 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Okay,, that's the way I feel about it, too. I found something at the Library of Congress here - and I will scout around for membership statistics.–CaroleHenson (talk) 01:05, 23 July 2023 (UTC)


 * ✅ here. Please feel free to edit.–CaroleHenson (talk) 18:04, 23 July 2023 (UTC)