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The Law and Mob Law in Attacks on Antislavery Newspapers, 1833–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2010

Richard B. Kielbowicz
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Extract

Two months after a mob in Alton, Illinois, killed abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy and destroyed his fourth press, a jury acquitted several assailants accused of rioting. By the time that the trials commenced in January 1838, the defenses had all been publicly aired; indeed, they had been rehearsed in print and at well-attended meetings long before the attack occurred. The mob's leaders had taken special care over several months to lay a legal foundation for their action; most notably, the Illinois attorney general led the pre-attack rhetorical justification and the post-attack courtroom defense. In the end, the jury found that resorting to forcible measures in such circumstances did not clearly fall outside the law.

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Law and History Review , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , Fall 2006 , pp. 559 - 600
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Copyright © the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 2006

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References

1. The Alton trials and the circumstances that led to them are discussed below.

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35. Lovejoy's martyrdom inspired many hagiographic accounts by contemporaries and historians. The best biographies are Dillon, Merton L., Elijah P. Lovejoy, Abolitionist Editor (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Gill, John G., Tide without Turning: Elijah P. Lovejoy and Freedom of the Press (Boston: Starr King, 1959).Google Scholar

Participants and eyewitnesses left important book-length accounts. The American AntiSlavery Society commissioned Lovejoy's brothers Joseph and Owen to write The Memoir of the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy Who Was Murdered in Defence of the Liberty of the Press, At Alton, Illinois, Nov. 7, 1837 (1838; reprint, Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries, 1970)Google Scholar [hereafter Lovejoy's Memoir]. Edward Beecher, a clergyman from a family of prominent clergy, left a thorough report , Narrative of Riots at Alton, ed. Merideth, Robert (1838; reprint, New York: Dutton, 1965)Google Scholar, of the public meetings that preceded the final battle. The vast majority of the primary sources are from the abolitionists' perspective. Although this might seem to diminish their evidentiary value, in this case, as well as virtually all the other mobbings, the adversaries rarely disputed facts; only interpretations and justifications were at issue.

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58. Resolutions and proceedings reprinted in Zanesville (Ohio) Gazette, 8 Sept. 1847; National Era, 23 Sept., 14 Oct, and 2 Dec. 1847; National Anti-Slavery Standard, 7 Oct. 1847; Volpe, , Forlorn Hope of Freedom, 74Google Scholar, 77, 110, 122, 127.

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67. Davis, Samuel H., Free Discussion Suppressed in Peoria (Peoria: n.p., 1843), 4.Google Scholar

68. Bailey, Sketch of Our Troubles; Marshall, , “Removal of C. M. Clay's Press,” 207Google Scholar.

69. Congressional Globe, 30th Cong., 1st sess. (1848), 649–73Google Scholar, quote at 662 (remarks of Thomas H. Bayly).

70. Blackstone's Commentaries, ed. Tucker, St. George (1803; reprint, South Hackensack, N.J.: Rothman Reprints, 1969), 5:166Google Scholar (this edition was published in Philadelphia with notes applicable to American law); Dane, , Digest of American Law, 3:50Google Scholar.

71. Dane, , Digest of American Law, 3:39Google Scholar; Blackstone's Commentaries, 4:5. See also Walker, Timothy, Introduction to American Law, 2d ed. (Cincinnati: Derby, Bradley & Co., 1846), 474Google Scholar, who agrees that law permitted a person who suffers from a nuisance “to abate it,” but without riot or violence.

72. Wood, , Law of Nuisances, 795.Google Scholar

73. Ibid., 795–97.

74. 115 Wend. 397, 399 (N.Y., 1836).

75. The phrase was often used derisively by abolitionists to describe some of their opponents.

76. Novak, , People's Welfare, 61–62Google Scholar, 71, 65, 123–24, 155, 180, 212–15, 226–27.

77. Quoted in Liberator, 24 Oct. 1835. See also Defensor, , Enemies of the Constitution Discovered, 57–58Google Scholar.

78. Grand jury statement reprinted in Sara Robinson, T. L., Kansas: Its Interior and Exterior Life (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, 1856), 243–44Google Scholar. See also Malin, James C., John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1942), 50Google Scholar. For an analysis that sifts the evidence and examines the legal dimensions of the court's role, see Malin, , “‘Sack of Lawrence,’” 465–94Google Scholar, 553–97. The judge's supposed orders became accepted facts in serious Kansas histories. The judge later denied that he had issued such an order . “A Defense by Samuel D. Lecompte,” Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society 8 (1903-1904): 389–405Google Scholar. At most, “[t]here may have been issued by the clerk of the court citations to the owners [of the newspapers and hotel] to appear and show cause why they should not be abated as nuisances,” the judge recalled. Ibid., 395.

79. Phillips, William A., The Conquest of Kansas by Missouri and Her Allies (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1856), 290–92Google Scholar, 305, quotes at 298–99; Herald of Freedom, 1 Nov. 1856; George W. Brown to Eli Thayer, 4 June 1856, Thayer Collection, Kansas Historical Society; letter from eyewitness, 26 May 1856, reprinted in Liberator, 27 Jun. 1856Google Scholar; Malin, , “‘Sack of Lawrence,’” 581Google Scholar; Nichols, , Bleeding Kansas, 103–7Google Scholar.

80. Weisberger, Bernard A., “The Newspaper Reporter and the Kansas Imbroglio,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 36 (1950): 633–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, points out that many of the eastern reporters covering the Kansas disturbances were antislavery partisans writing for Republican newspapers.

81. Birney to Gerritt Smith, 11 and 25 Nov. 1835, in Letters of James Gillespie Birney, 1831–1837, ed. Dumond, Dwight L. (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1938), 1:259 n. 4Google Scholar, quote at 273 [hereafter Birney's Letters]; Birney, , James G. Birney, 207–19Google Scholar; Fladeland, , James Gillespie Birney, 127–33Google Scholar; Folk, , “‘Queen City of Mobs,’” 69–70Google Scholar, 78; Richards, , “Gentlemen of Property and Standing,” 40–43Google Scholar, 94–95.

82. Nerone, John, The Culture of the Press in the Early Republic: Cincinnati, 1793–1848 (New York: Garland, 1989), 152–53Google Scholar, quote at 164; Folk, , “‘Queen City of Mobs,’” 66–69Google Scholar.

83. Birney to Lewis Tappan, 17 Mar. 1836, Birney's Letters, 1:310–12, quote at 311; Birney, , James G. Birney, 240–41Google Scholar; Fladeland, , James Gillespie Birney, 136Google Scholar. Aaron, , “Cincinnati, 1818–1838,” 462Google Scholar, claims that the night watch silently witnessed the vandalism, while Folk, , “‘Queen City of Mobs,’” 91Google Scholar, asserts that the mayor, forewarned, had ordered police patrols away from the site.

84. Folk, , “‘Queen City of Mobs,’” 97Google Scholar, 100 (quoting handbill); Birney to Lewis Tappan, 15 and 22 July 1836 , Birney's, Letters, 1:342–47Google Scholar.

85. The newspaper commentary is conveniently summarized in Folk, , “‘Queen City of Mobs,’” 93–100Google Scholar. See also Ellingson, , “Discourse and Collective Action,” 110–35Google Scholar, for a close analysis of the different positions represented in the newspaper discussions and popular meetings. Ellingson finds that the discourse clustered in three camps: abolition, law and order, and anti-abolition.

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