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Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) was still a young man in his twenties when he rose in protest to speak against Massachusetts attorney general James T. Austin. On December 8, 1837, Austin delivered a speech critical of Presbyterian minister and newspaper editor Elijah Parish Lovejoy (1802–1837), who had been murdered the previous month by a pro- slavery mob in Alton, Illinois. Austin accused Lovejoy of having behaved foolishly in confronting and angering the mob. He praised Lovejoy’s killers as patriotic resisters who had faced down the menacing abolitionists.