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Enjoy our first episode of the Fall as we talk with longtime journalist Ken Ellingwood about his new book, "First to Fall: Elijah Lovejoy and the Fight for a Free Press in the Age of Slavery." Lovejoy was an ardent abolitionist who used his mighty pen to demand an end to America's "original sin." Elllingwood's biography brings Lovejoy scholarship into the modern era with a vivid description of how Lovejoy, an up-and-coming newspaper publisher in the 1830s, battled terrorists who not only made him a target, but his sacred printing press. Indeed, he dies in a hail of gunfire trying to protect it, along with what he saw as his absolute right to utilize America's First Amendment. Ellingwood traces Lovejoy's abolitionist roots to religion and to our founding documents, that indeed call for free expression.

Freedom of the press isn't free. Lovejoy's story proves sometimes, it's deadly.

Ken Ellingwood is on Twitter at twitter.com/KenEllingwood

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