Heading: (Anti-Slavery)
Author: Lovejoy, Owen
Title: Letter from Abolitionist Congressman hailing Universal Freedom
Place Published: Washington, DC
Publisher:
Date Published: December 8, 1862
Description:

1 pg. Autograph Letter Signed. To an unknown correspondent.

Writing three weeks before his friend Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Lovejoy writes, "May the young all grow up generous and ardent advocates of universal Freedom."

Lovejoy was one of the few radical Abolitionists elected to the House of Representatives during the Civil War. Originally a fervent anti-slavery clergyman in Illinois, after seeing his brother, editor of an anti-slavery newspaper, murdered by an a pro-slavery mob, he had sworn to devote his life to "the cause that had been sprinkled with my brother's blood." Active in aiding fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad, Lovejoy had failed in his earliest political forays until being elected to the Illinois legislature, where he became a bosom buddy of Abraham Lincoln's. When Lincoln became President, Lovejoy was one of his most steadfast congressional supporters. When Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Lovejoy led the Republican House majority in defending the Administration and voting down Democratic resolutions condemning freedom for the slaves as hurting the war effort to reunite the Union.

Pasted to a blank leaf, with creases from folds and marginal darkening; good.