Lovejoy Asks for Help
To the friends and subscribers of the Alton Observer. The “Observer’ office has again been made the victim of mob violence. On Monday night, about eleven o’clock, the office was entered by a mob, and all the materials utterly destroyed. The press was broken to pieces, and the fragments, together with the type, fixtures, &c. thrown into the street.
I now appeal to you, and all the friends of law and order, to come up to the rescue. If you will sustain me, by the help of God, the press shall be again established at this place, and shall be sustained, come what will. Let the experiment be fairly tried, whether the liberty of speech and of the press is to be enjoyed in Illinois or not.
We need your help, and we must have it or sink. Let every man, who ever means to do any thing in the cause of evil and religious liberty, do it now. ……….Every thing depends on you. If you take hold, like men, like freemen, like Christians, all will be well; if you do not, mobism will triumph, but I shall be guiltless. Elijah P. Lovejoy
(Liberator, Sept 15, 1837, pg 3)
