of seven Algerine ships sailed close to the single American frigate in
line of battle. The crews looked across the bulwarks at each other, but
not a word was said until the last Algerine ship was opposite. "Where
are you going?" demanded the Moorish admiral.
"Wherever it pleases me," answered Decatur; and the _Guerrière_ sailed
on her course.
Early in October there was a great gathering of American ships
at Gibraltar. Captain Bainbridge's fleet, which included the
seventy-four-gun ship of the line _Independence_, was there when Decatur
arrived. The war between the United States and England was only recently
ended, and the presence of so many ships of the young Republic at the
English Rock of Gibraltar caused much talk among the Spaniards and other
foreigners. The sight of ships which had been English, but which were
now American, added to the awkward situation, and more than one duel was
fought on the Rock as the result of disputes over the War of 1812.
The Dey of Algiers, left to his own advisers and to the whispers of men
who were jealous of the United States' success, began to wish he had not
agreed to the treaty he had made with Decatur. His own people told him
that a true son of the Prophet should never have humbled himself before
the Christian dogs. In addition the English government agreed to pay him
nearly four hundred thousand dollars to ransom twelve thousand prisoners
of Naples and Sardinia that he was holding. Before everything else the
Dey was greedy. Therefore when Captain Oliver Hazard Perry, the hero of
the battle of Lake Erie, brought out in the _Java_ a copy of the treaty
after it had been ratified by the United States Senate, and it was
presented to the Dey by the American consul, William Shaler, the ruler
of Algiers pretended that the United States had changed the treaty,
and complained of the way in which Decatur had dealt with the Algerine
ships. Next day he refused to meet Mr. Shaler again, and sent the treaty
back to him, saying that the Americans were unworthy of his confidence.
Mr. Shaler hauled down the flag at his consulate, and boarded the _Java_.
Fortunately there were five American ships near Algiers; and these
were made ready to open fire on the Moorish vessels in the harbor.
Plans were also made for a night attack. The small boats of the fleet
were divided into two squadrons, to be filled by twelve hundred
volunteer sailors. One division was to make for the water battery and
try to spike its guns, while the other was to attack the batteries
on shore. Scaling-ladders were ready, and the men were provided with
boarding-spikes; but shortly before they were to embark the captain
of a French ship in the harbor got word of the plan and carried the
information to the Dey. The latter was well frightened, and immediately
sent word that he would do whatever his good friends from America
wanted. The next day Mr. Shaler landed again, and the Dey signed the
treaty.
The fleet then called a second time on the Bey of Tunis, who had been
grumbling about his dissatisfaction with Decatur's treatment. He
too, however, was most friendly when American war-ships poked their
noses toward his palace. After that the Barbary pirates let American
merchantmen trade in peace, although an American squadron of four ships
was kept in the Mediterranean to see that the Dey, and the Bey, and the
Pasha did not forget, and go back to their old tricks.
So it was that Decatur put an end to the African pirates, so far as the
United States was concerned, and taught them that sailors of the young
Republic, far away though it was, were not to be made slaves by greedy
Moorish rulers.
V
THE FATE OF LOVEJOY'S PRINTING-PRESS
Ever since the thirteen colonies that lay along the Atlantic coast
had become a nation ambitious men had heard the call, "Go West,
young man, go West!" There was plenty of fertile land in the country
beyond the Alleghany Mountains, and it was free to any who would
settle on it. Adventure beckoned men to come and help in founding new
states, and many, who thought the villages of New England already
overcrowded, betook themselves to the inviting West. One such youth was
Elijah Parrish Lovejoy, who came from the little town of Albion, in
Maine, and who, after graduating at Waterville College, had become a
school-teacher. This did not satisfy him; he wanted to see more of the
world than lay in the village of his birth, and when he was twenty-five
years old, in May, 1827, he set out westward.
The young man was a true son of the Puritans, brought up to believe
in many ideas that were already often in conflict with the views of
men of the South and West. He reached the small city of St. Louis, in
the pioneer country of Missouri, and there he found a chance to teach
school. He wrote for several newspapers that were being started, and in
the course of the next year edited a political paper that was urging
the election of Henry Clay as President. His interest in politics grew,
and he might have sought some public office himself had he not suddenly
become convinced that he was meant to be a minister, and determined to
prepare for that work at Princeton Seminary. When he returned to St.
Louis in 1833 his friends helped him to found a weekly religious paper
called the _St. Louis Observer_.
The editor found time from his newspaper work to ride into the country
and preach at the small churches that were springing up at every
crossroads. Missouri was more southern than northern, and he saw much
of slave-owning people. It was not long before he decided that negro
slavery was wrong, and that the only way to right the wrong was to do
away with it altogether. He began to attack slavery in his newspaper and
in his sermons, and soon slavery men in that part of Missouri came to
consider him as one of their most bitter foes.
Lovejoy had married, and expected to make St. Louis his permanent
home. But neither all the men who were interested in the _Observer_,
nor all the members of his church, approved of his arguments against
slaveholding, and when he was away at a religious meeting the
proprietors of his paper issued a statement promising that the editor
would deal more gently with the question of slavery in the future. When
Lovejoy returned and read this statement he was indignant; he was not a
man to fear public opinion, and he attacked his enemies more ardently
than ever.
The law of the land permitted slavery, and many of the chief citizens
in the frontier country approved of it. They hated the Abolitionists,
as those who wanted to do away with slavery were called. When men were
suspected of having helped to free slaves, or of sheltering runaway
negroes, they were taken into the country and given two hundred lashes
with a whip as a lesson. Sometimes Abolitionists were tarred and
feathered and ridden out of town; often their houses were burned and
their property destroyed. Lovejoy knew that he might have to face all
this, but the spirit of the Puritan stock from which he sprang would not
let him turn from his course.
He went on printing articles against the evils of slavery, he denounced
the right of a white man to separate colored husbands and wives, parents
and children, brothers and sisters, or to send his slaves to the market
to be sold to the highest bidder, or to whip or ill-use them as if they
had no feelings.
There was danger that the young editor would be mobbed, and the owners
of the _Observer_ took the paper out of his charge. Friends, however,
who believed in a free press, bought it, and gave it back to him. Waves
of public opinion, now for Lovejoy, now against him, swept through St.
Louis. By the end of 1835 mobs had attacked Abolitionists in Boston,
New York, and Philadelphia, and the news fanned the flames of resentment
against them in Missouri.
Lovejoy had good reason to know the danger of his position. One
September day he went out to a camp-meeting at the little town of
Potosi. He learned that two men had waited half a day in the village,
planning to tar and feather him when he arrived, but he was late, and
they had left. When he returned to St. Louis he found that handbills had
been distributed through the city, calling on the people to tear down
the office of the _Observer_. A newspaper named the _Missouri Argus_
urged patriotic men to mob the New England editor. Crowds, gathered on
street corners, turned dark, lowering looks upon him as he passed, and
every mail brought him threatening letters. He would not, however, stop
either writing or preaching against slavery.
His work constantly called him on journeys to small towns, sometimes
several days' ride from his home. Late in 1835 he was at a meeting in
Marion when reports came that St. Louis was in an uproar, that men who
opposed slavery were being whipped in the streets, and that no one
suspected of being an Abolitionist would be allowed to stay there.
Lovejoy had left his wife ill in bed. He started to ride back, a friend
going some seventy miles with him, half of the journey. The friend urged
him not to stay in St. Louis, pointing out that his young and delicate
wife would have to suffer as well as he. Travelers they met all warned
him that he would not be safe in the city. He rode on to St. Charles,
where he had left his wife. He talked with her, and she told him to go
on to his newspaper office if he thought duty called him there.
St. Louis was all excitement and alarm. The newspapers had attacked
the _Observer_ so bitterly that the owners had stopped printing it. A
mob had planned to wreck the office, but had postponed the task for a
few days. Men went to Lovejoy and told him he would not be safe in the
streets by day or night. Even the men of his church would not stand
by him, and a religious paper declared "that they would soon free the
church of the rotten sheep in it," by which they meant Elijah Lovejoy
and others who opposed slavery.
This Yankee, however, like many others who had gone to that border
country in the days when bitterness ran high, had a heroic sense of
duty. He wrote and printed a letter to the people, stating that men had
no right to own their brothers, no matter what the law might say. The
letter caused more excitement than ever.
The owners of the _Observer_ went to Lovejoy and requested him to retire
as its editor. For two days it was a question what the angry mobs would
do to him. Then a little better feeling set in. Men came to him, and
told him that he must go on printing his paper or there would be no
voice of freedom in all that part of the country. A friend bought
the newspaper from its owners, and urged Lovejoy to write as boldly
as before. This friend, however, suggested that he should move the
newspaper across the state line to Alton, Illinois, where feeling was
not so intense. Lovejoy agreed, and set out for Alton; but while he was
preparing to issue the paper there the same friend and others wrote him
that his pen was so much needed in St. Louis that he must come back. He
did so, and the _Observer_ continued its existence in St. Louis until
June, 1836.
There was so much strife and ill feeling, however, in Missouri that
the editor decided his newspaper would be better supported, and would
exert more influence, in Illinois. Accordingly he arranged to move
his printing-press to the town of Alton in July. Just before he left
St. Louis he published severe criticisms of a judge of that city who
had sided with slave-owners, and these articles roused even greater
resentment among the rabble who hated Lovejoy's freedom of speech.
If some of the people of Alton were glad to have this fearless editor
come to their town, many were not. Slavery was too sore a subject for
them to wish it talked about publicly. Many people all through that
part of the country looked upon an Abolitionist as a man who delighted
in stirring up ill feeling. Lovejoy sent his printing-press to Alton by
steamboat, and it was delivered at the wharf on a Sunday morning, about
daybreak. The steamboat company had agreed to land the press on Monday,
and Lovejoy refused to move it from the dock on the Sabbath. Early
Monday morning five or six men went down to the river bank and destroyed
the printing-press.
This was the young editor's welcome by the lawless element, but next day
the better class of citizens, thoroughly ashamed of the outrage, met and
pledged themselves to repay Lovejoy for the loss of his press. These
people denounced the act of the mob, but at the same time they expressed
their disapproval of Abolitionists. They wanted order and quiet, and
hoped that Lovejoy would not stir up more trouble.
The editor bought a new press and issued his first paper in Alton
on September 8, 1836. Many people subscribed to it, and it appeared
regularly until the following August. Lovejoy, however, would speak
his mind, and again and again declared that he was absolutely opposed
to slavery, and that the evil custom must come to an end. This led to
murmurs from the slavery party, and slanders were spread concerning the
editor's character. All freedom-loving men had to weather such storms
in those days, and Lovejoy, like a great many others, stuck to his
principles at a heavy cost.
The murmurs and slanders grew. On July 8, 1837, posters announced
that a meeting would be held at the Market House to protest against
the articles in the _Alton Observer_. The meeting condemned Lovejoy's
writings and speeches, and voted that Abolitionism must be suppressed
in the town. This was the early thunder that heralded the approach of a
gathering storm.
The Yankee editor showed no intention of giving up his stand against
slavery, but preached and wrote against it at every opportunity. As a
result threats of destroying the press of the _Observer_ were heard on
the streets of Alton, and newspapers in neighboring cities encouraged
ill feeling against the editor. The _Missouri Republic_, a paper printed
in St. Louis, tried to convince the people of Alton that it was a
public danger to have such men as Lovejoy in their midst, and condemned
the Anti-Slavery Societies that were being formed in that part of the
country. Two attempts were made to break into his printing-office during
the early part of the summer, but each time the attackers were driven
off by Lovejoy's friends.
The editor went to a friend's house to perform a marriage ceremony
on the evening of August 21, 1837. His wife and little boy were ill
at home, and on his return he stopped at an apothecary's to get some
medicine for them. His house was about a half mile out of town. As
he left the main street he met a crowd of men and boys. They did not
recognize him at once, and he hurried past them; but soon some began
to suspect who he was, and shouted his name to the rest. Those in the
rear urged the leaders to attack him, but those in front held back; some
began to throw sticks and stones at him, and one, armed with a club,
pushed up to him, denouncing him for being an Abolitionist. At last a
number linked arms and pushed past him, and then turning about in the
road stopped him. There were cries of "Tar and feather him," "Ride him
on a rail," and other threats. Lovejoy told them they might do as they
pleased with him, but he had a request to make; his wife was ill, and he
wanted some one to take the medicine to her without alarming her. One of
the men volunteered to do this. Then the editor, standing at bay, argued
with them. "You had better let me go home," he said; "you have no right
to detain me; I have never injured you." There was more denouncing,
jostling and shoving, but the leaders, after a short talk, allowed
Lovejoy to go on toward his house.
Meantime, however, another band had gone to the newspaper office between
ten and eleven o'clock, and, seeing by the lights in the building that
men were still at work there, had begun to throw stones at the windows.
A crowd gathered to watch the attack. The mayor and some of the leading
citizens hurried to the building, and argued with the ringleaders. A
prominent merchant told them that if they would wait until the next
morning he would break into the newspaper office with them, and help
them take out the press and the other articles, stow them on a boat,
put the editor on top, and send them all down the Mississippi River
together. But the crowd did not want to wait. The stones began to strike
some of Lovejoy's assistants inside the building, and they ran out by
a rear door. As soon as the office was empty the leaders rushed in and
broke the printing-press, type, and everything else in the building.
Next morning the slavery men in Alton said that the Abolitionist had
been silenced for the time, at least. They looked upon Lovejoy, and men
of his kind, as a thorn in the flesh of their peaceful community.
There were still a small number of "freedom-loving" people in Alton,
however, and these stood back of Elijah Lovejoy. Although two
printing-presses had now been destroyed, these men called a meeting
and decided that the _Observer_ must continue to be printed. Money was
promised, and the editor prepared to set up his press for the third
time. He issued a short note to the public, in which he said: "I now
appeal to you, and all the friends of law and order, to come 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." The money was raised,
and the dauntless spokesman for freedom sent to Cincinnati for supplies
for his new office.
That autumn enemies scattered pamphlets accusing Lovejoy and other
Abolitionists of various crimes against the country. Although few
people believed them, the circulars increased the hostile feelings, and
disturbed many of the editor's friends. Some of the latter began to
doubt whether the _Observer_ ought to continue its stirring articles.
Some thought it should be only a religious paper. But Lovejoy answered
that he felt it was his duty to speak out in protest against the great
evil of slavery. He finally offered to resign, if the supporters of
the paper thought it best for him to do so. They could not come to any
decision, and so let him continue his course.
The third printing-press arrived at Alton on September 21st, while
Lovejoy was away attending a church meeting. The press was landed from
the steamboat a little after sunset, and was protected by a number of
friends of the _Observer_. It was carted to a large warehouse to be
stored. As it passed through the street some men cried, "There goes
the Abolition press; stop it, stop it!" but no one tried to injure it.
The mayor of Alton declared that the press should be protected, and
placed a constable at the door of the warehouse, with orders to remain
till a certain hour. As soon as this man left, ten or twelve others,
with handkerchiefs tied over their faces as disguise, broke into the
warehouse, rolled the press across the street to the river, broke it
into pieces, and threw it into the Mississippi. The mayor arrived and
protested, but the men paid no attention to him.
Lovejoy's business had called him to the town of St. Charles, near St.
Louis, and he preached there while his third press was being attacked.
After his sermon in the evening he was sitting chatting with a clergyman
and another friend when a young man came in, and slipped a note into
his hand. The note read:
"MR. LOVEJOY:
"Be watchful as you come from church to-night.
A FRIEND."
Lovejoy showed the note to the two other men, and the clergyman invited
him to stay at his house. The editor declined, however, and walked to
his mother-in-law's residence with his two friends. No one stopped them,
and when they came to the house Lovejoy and the clergyman went in, and
sat down to chat in a room on the second floor. About ten o'clock they
heard a knock on the door at the foot of the stairs. Mrs. Lovejoy's
mother went to the door, and asked what was wanted. Voices answered,
"We want to see Mr. Lovejoy; is he in?" The editor called down, "Yes, I
am here." As soon as the door was opened, two men rushed up-stairs, and
into the sitting-room. They ordered Lovejoy to go down-stairs, and when
he resisted, struck him with their fists. Mrs. Lovejoy heard the noise,
and came running from her room. A crowd now filled the hall, and she had
to fight her way through them. Several men tried to drag the editor out
of the house, but his wife clung to him, and aided by her mother and
sister finally persuaded the assailants to leave.
Exhausted by the struggle, Mrs. Lovejoy fainted. While her husband
was trying to help her, the mob came back, and, paying no attention to
the sick woman, insisted that they were going to ride Lovejoy out of
town. By this time a few respectable citizens had heard the noise, and
came to his aid. A second time the rabble was driven away; but they
stayed in the yard, and made the night hideous with their threats to
the Abolitionist. Presently some of the men went up to Lovejoy's room
the third time, and one of them gave him a note, which demanded that he
leave St. Charles by ten o'clock the next morning. Lovejoy's friends
begged him to send out an answer promising that he would leave. Although
he at first declined to do this, he finally yielded to their urging. He
wrote, "I have already taken my passage in the stage, to leave to-morrow
morning, at least by nine o'clock." This note was carried out to the
crowd on the lawn, and read to them. His friends thought the mob would
scatter after that, and they did for a time; but after listening to
violent speeches returned again. The noise was now so threatening that
Lovejoy's friends begged him to fly from the house. His wife added her
pleadings to theirs, and at last he stole out unnoticed by a door at the
rear. He hated to leave his wife in such a dangerous situation, however,
and so, after waiting a short time, he went back. His friends reproached
him for returning, and their reproaches were justified, for, like hounds
scenting the fox, the mob menaced the house more noisily than ever.
Lovejoy saw that he must leave again in order to protect his wife and
friends. This he succeeded in doing, and walked about a mile to the
residence of a Major Sibley. This friend lent him a horse, and he rode
out of town to the house of another friend four miles away. Next day
Mrs. Lovejoy joined him, and they went on together to Alton.
One of the very first people they met in Alton was a man from St Charles
who had been among those who had broken into their house the night
before. Mrs. Lovejoy was alarmed at seeing him in Illinois, because the
mob in St. Charles had declared that they were going to drive Lovejoy
out of that part of the country. In order to quiet her fears her husband
asked some friends to come to his house, and ten men, well armed, spent
the next night guarding it, while he himself kept a loaded musket at his
side. The storm-clouds were gathering about his devoted head.
Even the leading citizens of this Illinois town now felt that it was
Lovejoy's own fault if his newspaper was attacked. They hated mobs, but
most of them hated Abolitionists even more. If he would stop attacking
slavery, the crowds would stop attacking him. It was evident that
the lawless element did not intend to let him continue to print his
newspaper, and it was almost as clear that the mayor and authorities
were not going to protect him. Three times now his press had been
destroyed.