Robert Green Ingersoll

Robert Green Ingersoll (Dresden, New York, 1833 – 1899) was an American lawyer, Civil War veteran, politician and orator, nicknamed "the Great Agnostic". He belongs to the so-called Golden Age of Free Thought, a late nineteenth-century movement that championed critical judgment over religious authority. His significance lies mainly in how he brought doubt about religion and humanist ideas to a wide public, rather than in a systematic philosophical work.

He grew up in a religious household. His father, John Ingersoll, was an abolitionist Congregationalist preacher whose radical views often forced the family to move. Robert taught in several Illinois schools, studied law and, together with his brother Ebon Clarke, was admitted to the bar in 1854. He later settled in Peoria, where he built a successful practice. In 1862 he married Eva Amelia Parker, and they had two daughters; the elder, Eva Ingersoll-Brown, became a well-known feminist and suffragist.

When the Civil War broke out, he raised and commanded the 11th Illinois Volunteer Cavalry, which fought at Shiloh. After the war he served as Illinois Attorney General and was an active figure in the Republican Party, though he never held elected office. His views on religion, slavery and women's suffrage closed the way to higher posts. When Illinois Republicans proposed that he run for governor on condition that he hide his agnosticism, he refused, judging it dishonest to conceal his convictions from the public. His 1876 speech nominating James Blaine, known as the "Plumed Knight" address, is still remembered as a model of political oratory, although Blaine did not win the nomination.

As a lawyer he took part in notable cases, including the Star Route trials, in which his clients were acquitted, and he defended a New Jersey man charged with blasphemy. He did not secure an acquittal, but his forceful defence is seen as having weakened blasphemy laws. Yet his fame rests mainly on his lectures. He spoke on a wide range of subjects, though his most popular themes were agnosticism and family life. He attacked the doctrine of hell, which he described as a catalogue of human cruelty and hatred, and he defended women's rights, opposed racial discrimination and opposed capital punishment. Audiences paid unusually high admission prices for the time to hear him.

He died of congestive heart failure in 1899. His brother-in-law collected his speeches, which were published in twelve volumes, and his ashes rest in Arlington National Cemetery. He was friends with the poet Walt Whitman, who considered him the greatest orator of his age, and he delivered the eulogy at Whitman's funeral in 1892. A popular edition of his work appeared in 2005, keeping his memory alive as one of the leading American champions of free thought.