Elijah Parish Lovejoy Life Quotations

My honored father will permit the observation that, though I have not heretofore always appreciated, as I ought, the motives and the feelings of a father, I hope I have learned wisdom in that respect; and my highest earthly gratification would be to make easy the downhill of life of those parents to whom I owe all that I am and most that I have.

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.