Elijah Parish Lovejoy

If I have been guilty of no violation of law, why am I hunted up and down continually like a partridge upon the mountains? Why am I threatened with the tar barrel? Why am I waylaid every day, and from night to night, and my life in jeopardy every hour?

I cannot surrender my principles, though the whole world besides should vote them down - I can make no compromise between truth and error, even though my life be the alternative.

If the civil authorities refuse to protect me, I must look to God, and if I die, I have determined to make my grave in Alton.

Nothing but a miracle of sovereign mercy could have arrested and saved me from eternal perdition. How I could have so long resisted the entreaties, the prayers, and the tears of my dear parents, and the influences of the Holy Spirit, is, to me, a wonder entirely incomprehensible.

It seems to me scarcely possible that one who has so long lived in sin, who has resisted so much light and has so often grieved away the Holy Spirit, as I have, should again be visited with its heavenly influences. But I hope it is so.

The cry of the oppressed has entered not only into my ears, but into my soul, so that while I live, I cannot hold my peace.

The eternal God - the infinite Jehovah - has done all he could do - even to the sacrificing his own Son - to provide a way for man's happiness, and yet they reject him, hate him, and laugh him to scorn!

I have been beset night and day at Alton. And now, if I leave here and go elsewhere, violence may overtake me in my retreat, and I have no more claim upon the protection of any other community than I have upon this.

Emancipation, to be of any value to the slave, must be the free, voluntary act of the master, performed from a conviction of its propriety.

I was, by divine grace, enabled to bring all my sins and all my sorrows and lay them at the feet of Jesus, and to receive the blessed assurance that He had accepted me, all sinful and polluted as I was.

Emancipation - what is meant by it? Simply that the slaves shall cease to be held as property and shall henceforth be held and treated as human beings. Simply, that we should take our feet from off their necks.

It is not possible that one man can convert another into a piece of property, thus at once annihilating all his personal rights, without the most flagrant injustice and usurpation.