“Your great-great-grandfather, Frank Richmond Milnor, sat right here in 1858,” my grandfather said, pointing to an unremarkable spot near the riverfront in Alton, Illinois. “He was just twelve, listening to the seventh Lincoln-Douglas Debate.”

My sister and I nodded, listening absently, the study of our rapidly-delaminating ice cream cones of greater focus and import than my Granddad’s words. This was part of the double-edged sword of visiting my grandparents: On the positive, we’d get ice cream and candy, marathon board games and TV at night, no chores and ample attention.

But, we’d also get cemetery tours. At any opportunity, my grandfather - and unofficial historian and lore-spinner extraordinaire - would casually steer his ship-like Oldsmobuillac toward realms of histories and headstones, each one lingered at, its very presence giving voice to endless stories of family, friends, and happenings of Alton over the ages.

“And just down there, behind where the Sparks Milling Company is,” my grandfather pointed westward, up the mighty Mississippi, “there once was an old warehouse, and that’s where Elijah P. Lovejoy, the first Abolitionist printer, was killed.”

Lincoln. Douglas. Abolition. Murder. It all touched my brain, young synapses firing, my liquefying ice cream now second place to my questions: “Who killed him, Granddad?” A pro-slavery mob who didn’t like what he was saying. “Why did they do it, Granddad?” They didn’t want people like him inspiring others to oppose slavery. “What did Lincoln say here to Douglas, Grandad?” So much. This is where he gave his “A House Divided” speech.

I peppered him with questions, some of which he knew, much he didn’t - or simply didn’t want to get into the details. Later, back at the house, he showed me an old book, Narrative Of Riots At Alton: In Connection With The Death Of Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy; the final sentence of the first paragraph caught me: “…the death of the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy : the first martyr in America to the great principles of the freedom of speech and of the press.”

Over the years, I’ve read a lot more about Lovejoy, his life, his impact, his legacy. While certainly a soldier for free speech (although debated by his descendants), Lovejoy was at his finest a fierce and absolutely unapologetic warrior for the cause of abolition, and a martyr for it, his story, his life and murder, becoming inspiration for John Brown; Lovejoy’s younger brother and outspoken Congressman, Owen Lovejoy; and no less importantly, Abraham Lincoln.

While Lovejoy had long been an ardent abolitionist, his furor over the institution grew considerably after the lynching of Francis McIntosh in St. Louis on April 28, 1836. A free Black man from Pennsylvania, McIntosh was a porter and cook on the steamship Flora which landed in St. Louis on April 28. After docking, McIntosh got off the boat, and while stories vary, he was soon asked by two officers to assist them in catching another sailor who had been in a fight. McIntosh refused (quite likely worried of getting involved with anyone in this city, rife as it was with slave catchers trying to obstruct the undergound railroad traffic to freedom across the river in Illinois), and was soon arrested and charged with breach of the peace. Told he would be in prison for five years, McIntosh panicked, grabbed a knife, stabbing both officers and killing one before fleeing. He was promptly caught and taken to jail. At the jail, an angry mob formed, broke in, and took McIntosh to the (then) outskirts of town. He was chained to a tree, wood piled up to his knees, and then burned to death to the cheers and jeers of hundreds.

Although a grand jury was later convened to investigate by none other than Judge Lawless, not a single person was charged or convicted for the crime. Instead, Lawless turned the blame on abolitionists like Lovejoy, saying through writings like his "the free negro has been converted into a deadly enemy."

The lynching of McIntosh, the murder of Lovejoy, the lack of accountability for either, the mob rule spreading across the 1830s United States of America, worried Abraham Lincoln, then a young lawyer. Also worrying to him was the fading-to-gray of the American Revolution in the public consciousness, the passion and wisdom - and articulation of those passions and wisdoms - of the Founding Fathers becoming lost on Americans some half-century removed.

On January 27, 1838, with all this swirling, Lincoln gave perhaps his most powerful speech ever, addressing the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, on the topic of “the perpetuation of our political institutions.” His words are no less - and I’d argue more - relevant today than 187 years ago.

Lincoln begins by noting that the America of 1838 - like the one of 2025 - was not at great risk from the outside, but rather the risk was from within:

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer: If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.

His worry is over “the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country,” the willingness to pass over the “sober judgments of courts” in favor of “the wild and furious passions” of the mob. When laws are ignored, fear-fueled passions allowed to reign supreme, “executive ministers of justice” relegated to the sidelines, a dangerous chaos prevails, threatening all:

When men take it in their heads to-day to hang gamblers or burn murderers, they should recollect that in the confusion usually attending such transactions they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is, and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake.

"How shall we fortify against it?" Lincoln asks. We must demand that every American swear “never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others.” He continues, passionately:

As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor—let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap; let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling-books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.

Lincoln was not solely worried about civilian mob rule and the need for all citizens to respect the rule of law. That was part of it, but he also remembered Judge Lawless and others of his ilk, an elected leader who abandoned the law to see his own version of justice meted out. Lincoln worried Lawless was not unique, but rather a more common type of political vigilante, one more fixated upon his own image, his own popularity and fame and place in the history books. Such a person, if not reigned in by the rule of law will, Lincoln speculated, stop at nothing to realize their egomaniacal aims.

Some “men of ambition and talents” will be happy simply “supporting and maintaining an edifice [the nation] that has been erected by others.” But others - and these are the dangerous ones, he calls them reapers - will not be satisfied without making their own deep, indelible mark: “What! think you [a seat in Congress] would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? Never!” Lincoln continues:

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. It sees no distinction in adding story to story upon the monuments of fame erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction... Is it unreasonable, then, to expect that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

As if he had a crystal ball, staring from 1838 to 2025, Lincoln continued with his fearsome vision (emphasis mine):

Distinction will be [the reaper’s] paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm, yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.