This plate commemorates the death of Presbyterian minister, abolitionist, and journalist Elijah Parish Lovejoy. In St. Louis during the 1830s, his writing grew more and more critical of slavery. He moved to nearby Alton, Illinois (a free state) in 1836, but he did not escape violent proslavery opposition.  On November 7, 1837, Lovejoy was murdered by a proslavery mob seeking to destroy his printing press. Lovejoy’s death made him an international martyr to the antislavery cause.

The plate includes texts from the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bible, combining the appeals to freedom of the press and racial equality. At the top, an enslaved man kneels next to Liberty, who stands next to a printing press. The image of the kneeling man is adapted from an emblem popular in the British abolitionist movement during the late 1700s.