Why We Need to Remember Ingersollby Mary Geo Tomion
When I was a child, far from Dresden, New York, I was fascinated by an old, tattered book that had been sold door-to-door before the turn of the century to book-hungry homemakers. Hill's Album of Biography and Art (1888) was filled with advice on penmanship, home decoration, animal husbandry, etiquette, phrenology, morals, and biographies of writers, actors, musicians, ancient and modern philosophers, robber barons, suffragists, orators, and political leaders. Queen Victoria and Ralph Waldo Emerson each merited a paragraph, but our own Robert Green Ingersoll earned two engraving-embellished pages describing his distinguished career as a lawyer, attorney-general of Illinois, and "one of the most effective public speakers in the country." Born in Dresden in 1833, Ingersoll was one of five children of a Congregationalist minister. His family moved to Ohio in 1834 and then eventually to Illinois where Robert and his brother Ebon began the study of law. One July 4th, when the orator of the day failed to make an appearance, Ingersoll was asked to speak to the crowd. He "threw a fire-brand into the audience" by praising freethinker and founding father Thomas Paine. In 1857 Robert and Ebon moved to Peoria, where Ingersoll practiced law for twenty-two years. He ran for Congress as a Democrat but was defeated, probably because of his strong antislavery views. During the Civil War he was a colonel in the cavalry, but resigned because of "failing health" and a "natural repugnance to shooting men." He served as Illinois attorney general from 1867 to 1869, but in 1868 lost a race for governor "because of his heterodox sentiments on religious questions." Having thus read as a child about Ingersoll's national fame and influence, I was surprised when I came to live in the Finger Lakes area that I could find no one who knew why a historical marker stood in front of his house. Schoolchildren didn't recognize his name. Even people who had enjoyed "Born Yesterday," that great 1950s comedy-melodrama in which William Holden quotes Ingersoll to Judy Holliday, didn't know who he was. Probably one reason for Ingersoll's local obscurity is his reputation as "The Great Agnostic." He wrote and spoke all of his life against the narrow-mindedness of institutionalized churches. Believing that individuals should freely explore the world of ideas, he deplored the Inquisition, the silencing of scientists such as Galileo, the persecution of dissenting Christians and, in his own time, the preaching of fear rather than love from many pulpits. He felt that humans made gods in their own image, following their own limited ethical vision. "An honest god is the noblest work of man," he observed. The "Bible" that should be written would not be the work of "inspired men, nor prophets, nor apostles, nor evangelists, nor of Christs. Every man who finds a fact, adds, as it were, a word to this great book. It is not attested by prophecy, by miracles or signs. It makes no appeal to faith, to ignorance, to credulity or fear. It has no punishment for unbelief, and no reward for hypocrisy.... It does not pretend to be holy, or sacred; it simply claims to be true." His belief in "liberty of thought and expression" meant he respected the rights of women and children. "Throw away forever the idea of master and slave," he said, meaning equality within the household as well as in the outside world: "I believe in the democracy of the family. If in this world there is anything splendid, it is a home where all are equals." He exhorted men to treat their wives as partners: "There is only one way to be happy, and that is to make somebody else so." Every woman has "all the rights I have and one more, and that is the right to be protected." Reminding his listeners of "the little children who turn pale when they hear their fathers' footsteps,'' he asked them to give their sons and daughters liberty, love, respect, and honesty. "Let your children have freedom and they will fall into your ways." Ingersoll believed in progress, progress that came from the restless, probing human intellect, from the heretic, the rebel, the dissident. "I plead for the right to think - to reason - to investigate," he said. He felt that free scientific and intellectual inquiry would overcome fear, ignorance, and superstition. His heroes were scientists and inventors who challenged accepted ways of doing things. His views on the issues of his time were founded on these interlocking principles: He insisted on complete freedom of thought for himself, and he defended equally the freedom of others. "There is but one blasphemy," he said, "and that is injustice." "I give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself." Thus, in 1887 he defended C.B. Reynolds, a lecturer on ''freethought,'' against charges of blasphemy. The New York Times reported that after his two-hour speech to the jury a man came to him and said, "Colonel Ingersoll, I am a Presbyterian pastor, but I must say that was the noblest speech in defense of liberty I ever heard! Your hand, sir! your hand!" (Reynolds was found guilty, however, and fined $25.00 and costs, all of which Ingersoll paid, "giving his services free"). Ingersoll was described by critics and newspaper reporters as "large-headed," "genial," and "generous," and his lectures shine with these qualities as well as with an irreverent and colloquial sense of humor. He wrote and spoke on issues such as labor, suffrage, family relations, prison reform, education, and religious and racial tolerance until his death in 1899. We need to remember Robert Ingersoll. First, because so many of his beliefs - on family life, women's and children's rights, freedom of thought and religion - have been so thoroughly embraced by the American people. We must not forget how hard he worked to gain acceptance for values many of us now take for granted. We need to remember Robert Ingersoll, too, because some of those ideas - equality of opportunity, the sanctity of open inquiry, and the separation of church and state - are being challenged now just as they had been in his time. Because many of the ideas Ingersoll espoused have been so widely accepted - and because at the same time they are a source of controversy - it is important to remember how he lived and what he fought for. Mary Geo Tomion is the librarian at Penn Yan High School. She is interested in informing local students about Dresden's most famous native son. Reprinted with permission from The Ingersoll Report Vol. 1, No. 3; original title The Dresden Connection: Why We Need to Remember Ingersoll.
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