During the 1830s, newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy would not let the issue of slavery fall by the wayside. In this biography, Ken Ellingwood illuminates this flawed yet heroic figure who fought for free press rights in a time when the First Amendment offered little protection for those who dared to critique America's "peculiar institution." Decades before the Civil War, the shooting had already begun, and as Ellingwood details here, Lovejoy's dramatic clashes with the pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, would make him an early martyr for the Abolitionist cause.