Robert Green Ingersoll is too little known today. Yet he was the foremost orator and political speechmaker of the late 19th century America – perhaps the best-known American of the post-Civil War era.
Ingersoll was born in Dresden, New York, on August 11, 1833, in a house that has now been restored as the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum. Ingersoll's father was a Presbyterian minister who changed congregations often. The Ingersolls left Dresden when the baby Robert was lest than four months old.
With his brother Ebon Clark Ingersoll, Robert set up a law practice in the growing town of Peoria, Illinois. The law practice prospered. Both brothers became active in local politics. In 1861 Robert Ingersoll raised the 11th Illinois Cavalry Regiment and was awarded the rank of Colonel. Ingersoll's regiment fought with distinction in the Battle of Shiloh. Soon after, Ingersoll was captured. As was sometimes done with officers early in the war, Ingersoll was paroled – allowed to go free on the condition that he did not fight again. Ingersoll built a reputation for oratory during and after the war. His speechmaking played a vital role in his brother Ebon's successful Congressional campaign.
Following the Civil War, he was appointed the first Attorney General of Illinois. It was the first – and last – public office Ingersoll would ever hold. Politically, he allied with the Republicans, the party of Lincoln and in those days the voice of progressivism.
Ingersoll was the best-known political speechmaker in 19th century America. In 1876 he gave a speech before the Republican National Convention in Cincinnati, nominating James G. Blaine for the presidency. The party nominated Rutherford B. Hayes instead, but Ingersoll's nominating speech – known ever after as the “Plumed Knight” speech – was considered for decades afterward the classic political speech of the age. Candidates sought Ingersoll's oratorical services eagerly. He campaigned for every Republican Presidential candidate but one, from Grant to McKinley. Yet because of his outspoken and controversial views, Ingersoll was never appointed to public office by any of the presidents whose elections he helped secure.
Ingersoll's legal career was also highly distinguished. Starting in 1880, he defended Thomas J. Brady and Stephen W. Dorsey in the famous Star Route Trial. The Star Route affair, which concerned the mis-assignment of rural postal routes, was the Watergate scandal of its day.
But it was his private speaking career that made him famous.
Between 1865 and 1899 Ingersoll crisscrossed the country on more than a dozen speaking tours. He would pack the largest theaters of the day at the then-substantial admission of $1 apiece. Ingersoll had numerous three- to four-hour lectures committed to memory. No human being had been seen and heard by more Americans—or would be, until the advent of motion pictures, radio, and television. His subjects ranged from Shakespeare and Burns to religion, from political and moral issues to the lives of famous patriots and scientists. Among his best-known speeches were “The Gods,” “Ghosts,” “Humboldt,” “Shakespeare,” and “What Must We Do to be Saved?” In an age when oratory was the dominant form of public entertainment, Ingersoll was the unchallenged king of American orators.
Ingersoll was beloved by contemporary leaders in all walks of life. Among his admirers were president James Garfield, poet Walt Whitman, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, inventor Thomas Edison, reformer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and preacher Henry Ward Beecher. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was especially impressed by Ingersoll. After hearing Ingersoll speak for the first time, he wrote his wife Olivia Langdon Clemens: “What an organ is the human speech when it is employed by a master!”
Other Americans considered themselves his enemies because of his fame as the “Great Agnostic.” No topic on which Ingersoll spoke attracted greater controversy than when he spoke of religion; advocating a liberal “religion of humanity,” Ingersoll rejected many of the conventional religious teachings of the day. He was especially critical of doctrines of eternal punishment, which he considered inconceivably unjust. In addition, Ingersoll was an early popularizer of Charles Darwin and a tireless advocate of science and reason. More, he argued for the rights of women and African-Americans.
Ingersoll also praised the virtues of family and fireside – and he practiced what he preached. Contemporary sources say his family life was idyllic. Opponents despaired of finding anything to disparage in Ingersoll's personal life.
Ingersoll died of heart failure on July 21, 1899, at Walston, his son-in-law's palatial home in Dobbs Ferry-on-Hudson, New York. He was 65 years old. Ingersoll was buried with military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va., where his large grave marker can still be seen.
Shortly after Ingersoll's death, his complete works were collected and published by his brother-in-law Clinton P. Farrell. The lavish 12-volume set was known as the “Dresden Edition,” named for the town of Ingersoll's birth. The Dresden Edition went through numerous editions, and remains in print today. Post-1913 versions include Herman Kittredge's biography of Ingersoll as the thirteenth volume.
Robert Green Ingersoll is frequently confused with two other famous Ingersolls of the nineteenth century. The Ingersoll Watch Company sold huge numbers of reliable pocket watches, typically priced at $1.00. Though Robert Ingersoll and the founder of the Ingersoll Watch Company share a common ancestor, there is no other connection between them. Robert Green Ingersoll also has no connection to the Ingersoll-Rand Company, a manufacturer of compressors and construction equipment still in operation today.
CFI SUMMIT
OCTOBER 24-27 2013
TACOMA, WASHINGTON
Joint Conference of the Council for Secular Humanism, Center for Inquiry, and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
The transnational secular humanist magazine
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