In America, who is morally responsible for political assassination? Of all humanitarian and reform movements, the one that shook the nation to its foundation sought the abolition of slavery. During the 1830s, advocates of Negro emancipation were attacked with fury in the free states of the North, and Illinois was no exception.

Elijah Lovejoy, born in Maine, came west to bolster the morality and culture of the new states. After studying for the ministry, he served as editor of a Presbyterian weekly, the St. Louis Observer, between 1833 and 1836, making the paper a vehement voice against slavery, temperance, and catholicism. He employed increasingly uncompromising language, making impossible his acceptance in St. Louis and perhaps even the peaceful attainment of his ends.

To protect his family from those outraged with his views, Lovejoy moved to Alton, Ill., then the largest city in the state. As a sign of things to come, his press, when it arrived, was immediately dumped into the river by persons incensed by his abolitionist editorials. Although Lovejoy promised the leading citizens of the city that the Alton Observer would have less anti-slavery emphasis than its St. Louis version, the first issue labeled "The system of Negro slavery . . . an awful evil and sin." During the following year Lovejoy's editorials became vigorously abolitionist.

On the night of Aug. 21, 1837, the Observer office was entered by a mob and Lovejoy's press and type were demolished. A replacement press purchased from Eastern contributions was removed from its warehouse and dumped into the river.

Edward Beecher, another transplanted New Englander, was president of Illinois College and Lovejoy's major supporter. In their minds the lines between theology and politics became blurred on the subject of slavery. With religious fervor, they proceeded with plans to organize a state anti-slavery society; but the meeting was taken over by Usher F. Linder, the attorney general of Illinois, and his anti-abolitionist supporters who won majority support for a motion rejecting Lovejoy's constitutional right to publish the Observer.

Thus, to the violent atmosphere seething with abolitionist and religious intensity was added the equally charged questions of the rights to assemble, to speak, and to publish. Asked to leave Alton, Lovejoy replied, "I know that I have the right freely to speak and Publish my sentiments, subject only to the laws of the land for the abuse of that right ... The contest was commenced here; and here it must be finished ... If I fail, my grave shall be made in Alton."

When a fourth press arrived, Lovejoy decided that it should be protected by an armed group of his supporters and operated out of a massive stone warehouse on the riverfront. The evening after its arrival, some time after 10 Monday night, Nov. 7, 1837, Lovejoy was shot five times and killed while defending his press from an outraged mob.

The nation responded with horror. Philadelphia abolitionists held a political meeting in Pennsylvania Hall, recently built by supporters of reform, but a mob burned it down. All summer there were outbursts of mob violence against blacks throughout the North.

Beecher, reeling from the event, spent his life trying to explain the fate of his friend and suggested the doctrine of organic sin, which appeared most recently to explain the assassination of John Kennedy. "As a nation," Beecher wrote, "we have long been sinking from the lofty ground of principle with which we began;" the "cursed love of gold has left to multitudes no standard of right and wrong but dollars and cents," and the "thirst for political promotion has left to others no criterion of truth but the opinions of the majority, however profligate."

It is the nation, the organic political entity, that in Beecher's view must be held responsible for Lovejoy's murder.