Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume I.

[130] prohibited; and any deputy postmaster who shall be guilty thereof, shall be forthwith removed from office.

This bill was ordered to a third reading by 18 Yeas to 18 Nays--Mr. Van Buren, then Vice-President, giving the casting vote in the affirmative. It failed, however, to pass; and that ended the matter.

Elijah P. Lovejoy, son of Rev. Daniel Lovejoy, and the eldest of seven children, was born at Albion, Maine, November 9, 1802. His ancestors, partly English and partly Scotch, all of the industrious middle class, had been citizens of New Hampshire and of Maine for several generations. He was distinguished, from early youth, alike for diligence in labor and for zeal and success in the acquisition of knowledge. He graduated with high honors at Waterville College, Maine, in September, 1826. In May following, he turned his face westward, and in the autumn of that year found employment as a teacher in St. Louis. In 1828, he became editor of a political journal, of the National Republican faith, and was thence actively engaged in politics of the Clay and Webster school, until January, 1832, when he was brought under deep religious impressions, and the next month united with the Presbyterian Church. Relinquishing his political pursuits and prospects, he engaged in a course of study preparatory for the ministry, entering the Theological Seminary at Princeton, New Jersey, on the 24th of March. He received, next Spring, a license to preach from the second Presbytery of Philadelphia, and spent the Summer as an evangelist in Newport, R. I., and in New York. He left the last-named city in the autumn of that year, and returned to St. Louis, at the urgent invitation of a circle of fellow-Christians, who desired him to establish and edit a religious newspaper in that city — furnishing a capital of twelve hundred dollars for the purpose, and guaranteeing him, in writing, the entire control of the concern. The St. Louis Observer, weekly, was accordingly first issued on the 22d of November. It was of the “Evangelical” or Orthodox Protestant school, but had no controversy, save with wickedness, and no purpose, but to quicken the zeal and enlarge the use-fulness of professing Christians, while adding, if possible, to their number. There is no evidence that it was commenced with any intent to war on Slavery, or with any expectation of exciting the special hostility of any interest but that of Satan. Its first exhibition of a combative or belligerent tendency had for its object the Roman Catholics and their dogmas; but this, though it naturally provoked some resentment in a city so largely Catholic as St. Louis, excited no tumult or violence. Its first articles concerning Slavery were exceedingly moderate in their tone, and favorable rather to Colonization than to immediate Abolition. Even when the editor first took decided ground against Slavery,¹ he still affirmed his hostility to immediate, unconditional emancipation. This article was, in part, based on an editorial in The St. Louis Republican, of the preceding week, which — discussing a proposed Convention to revise the Constitution of that State--said: