St. Louis January, 1836 

My Dear Brother 

The mobs in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York gave them this fore text. During the summer an elder in the First Presbyterian Church was frequently coming to me and telling me to beware – that I was in danger, that the constant talk was about mobbing me. [To] this I paid no heed. The first of last week, I went to Poiosi, a town about sixty miles southwest of this, to attend a camp meeting. On my way back I heard that two men had waited in that village for half a day for the purpose of tarring and feathering me. Providentially, I did not come into town till the next morning, and these men tired of waiting went home. On my return into the city I found the excitement getting up, and I was informed by the elder above mentioned, that a hand-bill had been printed to circulate throughout the city, for the purpose of establishing a mob to tear down the office of the Observer…

Source: Excerpt originally reproduced in Lovejoy, Joseph C. and Owen Lovejoy. Memoir of the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy; Who Was Murdered in Defence of the Liberty of the Press, at Alton, Illinois, Nov. 7, 1837. New York: John S. Taylor, 1838, p. 116.