Lincoln and Owen Lovejoy

[L Verge]

One of our Surratt volunteers grew up in Princeton, Illinois. She arrived for duty today and brought a clipping from the DeKalb Daily Chronicle re: a new book entitled Abraham Lincoln and Owen Lovejoy: Collaborators for Emancipation regarding the surprising relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Owen Lovejoy that helped to end slavery. The book was recently released by the University of Illinois Press. The authors are William and Jane Ann Moore, both retired pastors from the Congregationalist denomination.

They arrived as ministers to the First Congregational Church of Christ in DeKalb in 1986, and found a history book that revealed the church had been part of the anti-slavery movement. All members of the denomination had to live by a covenant promising to treat others with kindness and respect regardless of skin color. This led to their discovery of Owen Lovejoy, congressman, abolitionist, and Underground Railroad stop owner. Their research discovered that there were 115 anti-slavery Congregational churches organized in Illinois between 1846 and 1862, with a direct match between the location of the churches and the counties in which Lincoln did very well in his election for President.

The Lovejoy Homestead is evidently a public museum?? I am familiar with only the name of Owen Lovejoy, but evidently Lincoln developed a friendship with him and referred to it as "one of increasing respect and esteem."