Owen Lovejoy

This article describes the American politician. For the US paleoanthropologist of the same name, see C. Owen Lovejoy .

Owen Lovejoy

Owen Lovejoy (born January 6, 1811 in Albion , Kennebec County , Massachusetts , †  March 25, 1864 in Brooklyn , New York ) was an American politician . Between 1857 and 1864 he represented the state of Illinois in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Born in present-day Maine , Owen Lovejoy was a cousin of US Senator Nathan A. Farwell (1812-1893). He attended the public schools of his home country and then until 1832 Bowdoin College in Brunswick . He also studied law, but without ever working as a lawyer. After studying theology and the subsequent ordination, he worked as a clergyman in the Congregational Church , just like his father had before . In 1836 he came to Alton , where his older brother Elijah was clergyman and leader of the movement against slavery . The following year, Owen Lovejoy saw his brother murdered by a mob. He swore he would never forget this act and became a staunch abolitionist too .

Between 1839 and 1856 he was a clergyman at Princeton . Politically, he became a member of the Republican Party founded in 1854 . That same year he was a member of the Illinois House of Representatives . Lovejoy then worked with the future President Abraham Lincoln . The two men remained close friends until Lovejoy's death. He supported Lincoln's election campaigns and was later a loyal helper in Congress to Lincoln, who had been president since 1861.

In the congressional election of 1856 Lovejoy was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the third constituency of Illinois , where he succeeded Jesse O. Norton on March 4, 1857 . After three re-elections, he could remain in Congress until his death. There he experienced the development up to the outbreak of the civil war and from 1861 the events of the war itself. From 1861 to 1863 Lovejoy was chairman of the agricultural committee; from 1863 he headed the District of Columbia Administration Committee . He successfully campaigned for the abolition of slavery in the federal district and was also involved in the abolition of this institution in the territories. Since 1863 he represented the fifth district of his state as the successor to William Alexander Richardson . Owen Lovejoy died in Brooklyn on March 25, 1864 and was buried in Princeton.

literature

• Owen Lovejoy, William F. Moore, Jane Ann Moore: His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838-64 . University of Illinois Press, 2004 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).

Web links

• Owen Lovejoy in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Owen Lovejoy in the database of Find a Grave (English)