Description:

Elijah P. Lovejoy, an 1830s abolitionist, ran a Missouri (which was a slave state) newspaper called the St. Louis Observer. Slavery advocates attacked and destroyed his presses numerous times, forcing him across the river to Alton in 1837. The paper was then named the Alton Observer. 

Though Illinois was a free state, he still enraged some citizens. On November 7, 1937, a group of 20 supporters accompanied him at the Godfrey and Gilman warehouse to safeguard a new press until it could be installed at the Observer. A pro-slavery mob assembled outside the warehouse, but the men inside would not abandon the press. The mob then tried to set the warehouse on fire, and as Lovejoy was attempting to put out the fire, he was killed by a shotgun blast.

Plans for the monument began in the 1850s, but construction did not begin until the 1890s. The memorial features a 17-foot-tall Victory atop a 93-foot-high granite column, guarded by two granite sentinel columns, each 30-feet-high and adorned with a bronze eagle. The Monument is the tallest in the state.

The Lovejoy Monument can be visited daily from dawn to dusk.