Discover Ingersoll by Michael Grant Recently I was wondering in print how fine it would be if the sound of Abraham Lincoln's voice might have been saved for posterity, as Henry Fonda's has been. I wouldn't trade Lincoln's voice for Henry Fonda's, but having it would be fine all the same. This rumination brought a vote from reader Frank Mortyn for Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) as "one of the all-time greats in oratory." I had never heard of Ingersoll, never seen his name included in the ranks of the oratorical greats, nor encountered him on "Jeopardy!" Mortyn provided some compelling numbers. Quoting Roger Greeley, Ingersoll's biographer, Mortyn said that on Oct. 20, 1876, Ingersoll spoke in Chicago at the Exhibition Hall: "The Chicago Tribune devoted its entire page one to reporting this event. Boys were literally hanging from the rafters! Fifty thousand persons heard this orator! Did they hear his words, in the absence of amplification? It seems hardly possible. What, then, was the attraction of his presence?" I am reminded at this point a very funny (because it was realistic) scene from Monty Python's "The Life of Brian," of the peasants toward the back who got into a fight because they couldn't hear the Sermon on the Mount. Ingersoll would have had to possess quite a projection power to overcome the ordinary cough management from a crowd of 50,000. "Most of his speech," wrote Mortyn, "was just a harangue against (presidential candidate Samuel J.) Tilden and the Democrats. Was that enough to bring fifty thousand people out to hear this extraordinary American orator, and to hold them?" Ingersoll did have going for him the double crowd-appeal whammy of presidential politics and maverick religion. The title of Greeley's Ingersoll biography - "Ingersoll: Immortal Infidel" - provides a hint. Ingersoll, son of a Presbyterian minister whose God was a vengeful one, made a career of challenging religious convention. By the 1870s, his views were well-known in the Midwest, where he had served as state attorney general of Illinois. His 1876 Chicago speech, and others in behalf of Republican presidential nominee Rutherford B. Hayes, made him famous nationally. Historian Orvin Larson of Brooklyn College writes: "In 1877, Ingersoll made his first transcontinental lecture tour, attracting capacity houses, to the consternation of the orthodox clergy." During that tour, Ingersoll said, "We had a magnificent meeting last night. I made it hot for the dear old stupid theologians." Larson said Ingersoll was "more an agnostic than an atheist," and called him a "practical humanist," and he quoted Ingersoll's creed: "I have a creed for this the only world of which I know anything: 1. Happiness is the only good. 2. The way to be happy is to make others so. 3. The place to be happy is here. 4. The time to be happy is now." The available references don't mention Ingersoll's possible role as precursor to various of the Southern California "feel-good" ministries. But his creed from the 1800s has a 1990s contemporariness about it that might draw good crowds today. Ingersoll's own contemporary, the earthy Walt Whitman, called the orator's work "a fiery blast for the new virtues." Ingersoll was reported to have developed at least 20 major "anti- orthodox" lectures, with titles like, "Some Mistakes of Moses," "Why I Am an Agnostic" and "What Shall We Do to be Saved?" He called Shakespeare his "Bible," and Robert Burns his "hymnbook." He must have been a character, and Mortyn is obviously right: Too bad we can't hear Ingersoll speak. This article first appeared in The San Diego Union, June 23, 1991. Table of Contents | 1993 Issues | Subscribe Truth Seeker | Feedback | Freethought.com Webmaster Credit card Orders call: 800-321-9054 or fax: (619)676-0433 Or send check or money order to: Truth Seeker / 16935 W. Bernardo Drive, Suite 103 / San Diego, CA 92127 $20.00 annual U.S. subscription ($35.00 international). Individual issues—$10.00 + $2.50 postage and handling Or be a committed freethinker and send $35.00 for a two year subscription. Truth Seeker is published by Truth Seeker Co., Inc. (ISSN 0041-3712) © 1996