"THE FIRST AMERICAN MARTYR TO THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS, AND THE FREEDOM OF THE SLAVE" (JOHN QUINCY ADAMS): FIRST EDITION OF MEMOIR OF THE REV. ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY, 1838
(LOVEJOY, Elijah P.) LOVEJOY, Joseph C. and Owen. Memoir of the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy. New York, 1838.
First edition of the publisher and editor's memoir, issued the year after his murder—killed by "five bullets in his heart, while defending his fourth press from an armed, arsonist mob"—only two years after he denounced the lynching by fire of a free black man, as an act of "savage barbarity," with introduction by John Quincy Adams, a seminal record of a key event in America's abolitionist battle and the history of the First Amendment. $3200.
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