What do you do when your older brother seems to know exactly who he is--and you don't? That is the Owen Lovejoy I met while writing Lincoln Seeks Justice for Elijah Lovejoy. Owen admired his older brother Elijah enormously. Elijah had strong convictions. He had become a minister and newspaper editor. He had taken a public stand against slavery, despite the increasingly serious consequences.

Two men were waiting for Elijah Lovejoy on the road from Alton. Doctors Beall and Jennings threatened to tar and feather him, and they had intercepted him away from home. Lovejoy was alone and unarmed. By this point, the controversy surrounding Lovejoy had become increasingly dangerous. His opposition to slavery and the positions he took in his newspaper had made him enemies.

Look at almost any photograph of Abraham Lincoln and you see a serious man. Sometimes a very tired man. You probably don't look at that face and immediately think, There goes the funniest man in the room. But humor was an important part of Lincoln's personality long before he became president. One story from his younger years particularly makes you smile.

I discovered an uncomfortable problem while writing Lincoln Seeks Justice for Elijah Lovejoy. I was writing a novel about slavery and abolition, and almost all of the people in my story were white. It wasn't because there were no Black people in Alton. There was a significant Black community in and around the city, including Hunterstown. The problem was finding their stories.

Abraham Lincoln was only twenty-eight when he warned that one of the greatest dangers facing America might come not from a foreign enemy, but from Americans themselves. What worried him? Mob violence and contempt for the law. In January 1838, Lincoln spoke before the Young Men's Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois. the country had been witnessing disturbing acts of mob violence, and Lincoln believed something larger was at stake.

William Harned wasn't an abolitionist. Yet when the conflict surrounding Elijah Lovejoy's printing press grew increasingly dangerous in Alton, Illinois, Harned became one of the men willing to defend him. Why? For Harned, it seems to have been less about slavery than about something more basic: the law and what he believed was right. Harned had come to Alton from Texas.

Long before Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd, there was another Mary--Mary Owens. Lincoln had known Mary during his New Salem years, and at one point he apparently thought she might make a suitable wife. Her sister encouraged the possibility, and Lincoln agreed that if may returned to Illinois, he would consider marrying her. So Mary returned. And Lincoln immediately had second thoughts.

Owen Lovejoy didn't seem to know exactly what he wanted to do with his life. But his older brother Elijah did. Elijah had become a minister, a newspaper editor, and an outspoken opponent of slavery. Owen admired him. he wasn't jealous of his brother's growing fame. He followed Elijah west, studied for the ministry himself, and wanted to become involved in the fight against slavery.

It's hard to imagine Abraham Lincoln losing an election. We know what came later. President. The Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation. A face carved into Mount Rushmore. But in 1832, none of that existed. Lincoln was twenty-three years old when he ran for the Illinois legislature for the first time. He had little money, little formal education, and none of the prestige we associate with him today.

Winthrop Gilman had good reasons to stay out of Elijah Lovejoy's troubles. He was a successful businessman in Alton. He was married, and his infant son was only a few months old. Gilman and his wife, Abia, had already suffered the death of their first child. He had a family to protect. He also had property to protect. Yet when the controversy surrounding Lovejoy's printing press grew more dangerous, Gilman stepped directly into it.

Imagine arriving in a new city to begin your career with everything you own packed into your saddlebags. You're twenty-eight old. You've managed to become a lawyer despite having almost no formal education. You're ambitious. You believe you might be capable of something more. There's just one problem. You can't afford a bed...or a room. That was Abraham Lincoln when he arrived in Springfield, Illinois, in 1837.

Imagine several angry men trying to drag your husband out of the house and into the street. You don't know what they intend to do once they get him outside, but they have threatened before to kill him. You only know that you cannot let them take him. So you wrap yourself around him and hold on. This is what Celia Lovejoy did.

Today, we are surrounded by information. Newspapers, television, websites, podcasts, and social media compete constantly for our attention. If we disagree with one voice, there are hundreds of others waiting for us. The world Abrham Lincoln knew was very different. In the 1830s, a newspaper editor could wield enormous influence in his community. His newspaper didn't simply report the news. It argued politics, promoted candidates, attacked opponents, shaped public opinion, and sometimes challenged the beliefs of the people who read it.

Abraham Lincoln was many things during his lifetime--lawyer, politician, congressman, president. But detective? Not exactly. So why did I decide to put a young Abraham Lincoln at the center of a historical mystery? When Lincoln Seeks Justice for Elijah Lovejoy begins, Lincoln is still decades away from becoming the president we all recognize. He's a young Illinois legislator and lawyer, still building his career and deciding what kind of man he wants to become.

Have you ever wondered why some history stays with you while other history is quickly forgotten? When I began researching Lincoln Seeks Justice for Elijah Lovejoy, I immersed myself in newspapers, speeches, letters, memoirs, and court records. The facts were fascinating, but something was missing. I discovered that history alone doesn't always help us understand the people who lived it.

I doubt very much that most of my audience is familiar with Elijah Lovejoy. Outside of Illinois, many people have never heard of him. Even here in the Midwest, his name is often only briefly mentioned in history books. Yet in 1837, Elija Lovejoy was one of the most controversial men in America. So, who was he? He was a Presbyterian minister, a newspaper editor, and a man whose deep Christian faith shaped everything he did.

One of the biggest surprises I encountered while writing Lincoln Seeks Justice for Elijah Lovejoy was learning that good history doesn't automatically become a good novel. I spent years reading court transcripts, newspaper accounts, speeches, letters, and memoirs. I wanted to understand not only what happened, but how the people involved thought and felt. At first, I tried suing some of the material almost exactly as I found it.

One of the questions I am asked most often is, "How much of your novel is true?" The answer isn't as simple as you might think. Every historical novel is different. Some authors use history simply as a backdrop for an entirely fictional story. Others stay very close to the historical record. Neither approach is right or wrong--they simply tell different kinds of stories.

I spend months--and sometimes years--collecting pieces of a person's life. Newspaper articles. Letters. Court records. Speeches. memoirs. Census records. Even advertisements and legal notices can reveal something about a person's character. One source rarely tells the whole story. A newspaper might describe a dramatic event. A court record may reveal what actually happened. A letter written by a friend may show an entirely different side of the same person.

When we think about Abraham Lincoln's early career, we often picture him surrounded by thoughtful lawyers debating great questions of law and politics. The reality was far more complicated. One of the most influential men in Illinois during Lincoln's first years as a lawyer was Usher F. Linder, the state's Attorney General from 1837-1839. Lincoln served with Linder in the Illinois legislature and knew him personally.

To those of you who have been exploring Lincoln's world with me, welcome back. As I wrote Lincoln Seeks Justice for Elijah Lovejoy, I thought about a question that would have seemed perfectly natural in Illinois during the autumn of 1837: Why was everyone talking about Alton? Today, Alton is a quiet river town on the Mississippi River. But in the late 1830s, it became the center of a national conversation.

To those of you who have been exploring Lincoln's world with me, thank you for your patience. You may have noticed that my Tuesday and Thursday posts suddenly stopped for a couple of weeks. I wanted to let you know why. My father had a catastrophic fall and was in hospice, and shortly afterward he passed away. The days that followed were filled with family, planning his funeral, looking through old photographs, sharing stories, and saying goodbye to someone who had been an important part of my life for many years.

One of the questions I had to answer to write Lincoln Seeks Justice for Elijah Lovejoy was: What did Abrahm Lincoln know about the growing crisis in Alton. Today we can look back on history and see events as if they were inevitable. We know how the stories end. The people living through them did not. Lincoln was a new lawyer in Springfield in 1837.

One of the questions at the heart of my novel is not about Abraham Lincoln. It is about Elijah Parrish Lovejoy. Why did he stay? By the time Lovejoy arrived in Alton, he had already experienced a great deal of violence toward he and his family. This was not a man walking blindly into danger, but he hoped it would be better.

One of the questions I had to answer while writing my novel was obvious to me yet also a central premise of the work: Why would Abraham Lincoln care about Elijah Lovejoy? Why would he care about what happened in Alton and feel compelled to go there? Lincoln and Lovejoy never met. When I began reading about the period, I realized that Lovejoy's struggle was taking place against a much larger backdrop of violence and growing threats to the rule of law.

As I finished watching a documentary on Abraham Lincoln and began one on Ulysses S. Grant, I found myself thinking about Lincoln's judgement and the harsh criticism received in quarters for not replacing Grant. Today, Grant is remembered as one of the Union's most successful generals. During the war, however, many people wanted him removed. Critics complained about his drinking. Others focused on the staggering casualties suffered by his armies.

This week I ended up returning to Chapter 3 of my novel after uncovering comments from my writers group that I had not fully addressed. It felt a little unhappy moving backward in the manuscript instead of forward, but revision often works that way. Sometimes the foundation needs attention before the upper floors can be built. While revising, I also rewatched part of a Lincoln documentary.

When we look back at Abrahma Lincon's life, it is easy to assume that his rise to the prsidency was inevitable. It wasn't. Lincoln experienced political defeats, business failures, and years of uncertainty before he became a national figure. For much of his career, he was known primarily as an Illinois lawyer and plitician. One of the turning points came in February 1860 when Lincoln traveled to New York City to deliver what became known as the Cooper Union Address.

Lincoln is often remembered for great speeches, great debates, and great decisions. This week while visiting The Lincolns at Home exhibit at the Allen County Public Library and watching a new documentary about Lincoln's early life, I was reminded about what a great storyteller he was. The documentary spent considerable time on the stories, jokes and anecdotes that became part of his public life and legend.

Abraham Lincon's public persona was no accident. He carefully shaped the way people understood him. His frontier origins were real. He lived in a world of physical labor, limited schooling, rough travel, and borrowed books. But he also realized that those experiences carried politcal power. The image of the rail splitter was not simply biography. It was also strategy. Lincoln recognized that juries, voters, and ordinary citizens responded to a man who appeared connected to their own struggles and daily lives.

One of the most remarkable things about Abraham Lincoln is how much of his education cam not through formal schooling, but through reading. Lincoln grew up in a world shaped by physical labor and limited opportunity. Books were not abundant on the frontier, and education often came in fragments. Yet he read whenever he could, borrowing books, studying by firelight, and returning repeatedly to works that challenged and expanded his thinkings.

I'm only two days into my break and having to do a lot of household and yard chores that have connected me to the difficult work of the 19th century. When we think about Abrham Lincoln, it is easy to picture speeches, debates, and history-changing decisions. Yet Lincoln came from a deeply physical worked--one shaped by labor, weather, land and exhaustion.

Today begins three weeks away from work, and with it comes the hope of finally moving more deeply into the writing itself. During work stretches, writing often exists in fragments--notes, revisions, ideas carried in the mind between responsibilities and long days. The story continues moving, but sometimes at a distance. Time off changes that. There is a difference between thinking about a book and living inside it for a while.

As I follow Abraham Lincoln's life and work on my novel, there is one idea that keeps appearing again and again in his early thinking: the fear that civilization itself could begin to unravel. Lincoln lived during a period of growing instability in the United States. Mob violence, political anger, and deepening sectional divisions were becoming increasingly common. The murders of Francis McIntosh and Elijah Lovejoy were signs of something larger and more dangerous.

Long before Abraham Lincoln became president, he was already living in a country increasingly shaped by mob violence. The murders of Francies McIntosh in St. louis and Elijah P. Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois were familiar to him. They unfolded within the world in which he lived, traveled, and practiced law. What Lincoln understood was that mob violence endangered more than individual lives.

One of the moments that I refer to in my study of Abraham Lincoln is the Lyceum Address. At the time, Lincoln was still a new young lawyer and politician in Illinois. He was not yet the national figure history would later remember. But in this speech, it is possible to see the beginnings of the ideas that would define much of his later life.

This week I spent time researching through a section of family history, tracing connections between the Pelton, Warren and Mayhew families. What stands out is not a single event but the pattern. These families are connected through marriage, shared Quaker roots, and a migration path from New England into Ohio, Indiana, and the broader Midwest. As the lines come together, it becomes clear that history does not move through isolated individuals.

In working on Abraham Lincoln and the beginnings of his public life, I have studied his first major address, the Lyceum Address. Lincoln never met Elijah P. Lovejoy, but the events surrounding his death were very much in the news at the time, and they form part of the background to that speech. Lovejoy's murder was not simply the death of one man.

In thinking about Abraham Lincoln, it is easy to focus on the public figure--the president, the decisions, and the place he holds in history. But the more I study, the more I am drawn to the personal side of his life--the parts that are less certain, and often more difficult to gauge. Lincoln experienced the loss of not one, but two sons.

During my recent trip, I visited an immersive Titanic experience, something I had not done before. That alone made it feel like a new kind of encounter with history. I've seen the film Titanic and other programs about the disaster, but this experience brought different aspects to life. There were exhibits showing the separation between first and third class--how differently people lived on the same ship.

I've just returned from a trip to Baltimore, where I had the chance to visit the home and grave of Edgar Allan Poe. Both the house and grave impressed me. The house was so small, sad and desperate. Standing inside, it was impossible not to feel how confined life must have been there. The two stairways were twisted, steep and narrow.