Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the country’s greatest president, could be termed a martyr, and yet there’s an old one liner bit of humor about his assassination:
“In spite of everything else, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”
It’s easier to find humor in historical events from which we are separated, for no one alive today is directly affected by the great man’s death. It would be more difficult to joke about JFK’s assassination, as many of us are still alive were directly affected by it.
In the nearby town of Alton, Illinois, Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered in 1837 for defending a press and his right to free speech, as the editor of a newspaper, which was a pivotal moment in history. In his book, Don’t Know Much About the Civil War, author Ken Davis cites Rev. Lovejoy’s death as the possible spark that ignited the War Between the States, for he was an abolitionist.
There have been volumes written on Mr. Lovejoy’s life and plight and I have even recently read a really good graphic novel version of the events leading up to the murder and the act itself, titled The Death of Elijah P. Lovejoy by Noah Van Seiver.
In my willy nilly research library, I found a first print volume, published in 1838 of the Alton Riots, by Rev. Edward Beecher, who gave a first hand account of the events leading up to and the night of the murder. A first hand account of a friend of Mr. Lovejoy WHO WAS THERE! That was exciting reading!
My friend, the head librarian, Lacy, turned me on to another recently-authored book on Lovejoy, The First to Fall, by Ken Ellingwood, and I’ve gotten about halfway through that when I stopped. I plan to complete the book, but wanted to gain a different slant on the event, did some art and came up with an idea for a musical.
Now, I don’t fancy myself as a lyricist, but am enjoying this new-found art project done in a MAD magazine genre, using satire and parodies. There are four songs in the works, taken from classic tunes.
Here’s the background: Lovejoy has had THREE printing presses destroyed and dumped in the Mississippi River by pro-slavery mobs. A fourth one is delivered by steamboat and stored on the third story of a stone warehouse owned by two wealthy local businessmen. Lovejoy and his friends/followers plan to defend the press from a mob which is certain to come.
We now go to that third story of the warehouse where Lovejoy sings “A Mobbin’ Tonight” to the tune of Elvis’ “Good Rockin’ Tonight”:
