The Great Agnostic (20 page)

And I to-day thank him, not only for you but for myself, for all the brave words he has uttered. I thank him for all the great and splendid words he has said in favor of liberty, in favor of man and woman, in favor of motherhood, in favor of fathers, in favor of children, and I thank him for the brave words he has said of death.

He has lived, he has died, and death is less terrible than it was before. Thousands and millions will walk down into the “dark valley of the shadow” holding Walt Whitman by the hand. Long after we are dead the brave words he has spoken will sound like trumpets to the dying.

And so I lay this little wreath upon this great man's tomb. I loved him living, and I love him still.

1
. Robert Green Ingersoll (hereafter RGI), “Individuality,”
The Works of Robert Ingersoll
(New York, 1900), vol. 1, p. 201.

2
. RGI, “Centennial Oration,”
Works
, vol. 9, p. 74.

3
. Ibid.

4
. Ibid., p. 93.

5
. In C. H. Cramer,
Royal Bob: The Life of Robert G. Ingersoll
(New York, 1952), p. 102.

6
. RGI, “The Gods,”
Works
, vol. 1, p. 88.

7
. RGI,
Works
, vol. 8, p. 191.

8
. In Roger E. Greeley,
Ingersoll: Immortal Infidel
(Buffalo, NY, 1977), p. 160.

9
.
Mason City Republican
, June 11, 1885, cited in Cramer,
Royal Bob
, p. 218.

10
. RGI, “Some Mistakes of Moses,”
Works
, vol. 2, pp. 130–131.

11
. RGI,
Works
, vol. 8, p. 393.

12
. Ibid., pp. 394–395.

13
.
Philadelphia Times
, September 25, 1885.

14
. Theodore Roosevelt,
Gouverneur Morris
(Oyster Bay, NY, 1975), p. 174.

15
. RGI to John Ingersoll, August 1, 1891, quoted in Orvin Larson,
American Infidel: Robert G. Ingersoll
(New York, 1962), p. 195.

16
. Frederick Lewis Allen,
Only Yesterday
(New York, 1959), pp. 48–49.

17
.
New York Times
, July 22, 1899.

18
. Edgar W. Howe,
The Atchison-Daily Globe
, July 21, 1899, quoted in Roger Greeley,
Ingersoll: Immortal Infidel
, p. 158.

1
. Edward G. Smith,
The Life & Reminiscences of Robert Green Ingersoll
(New York, 1904), cited in C. H. Cramer,
Royal Bob
, p. 20.

2
. Cameron Rogers,
Colonel Bob Ingersoll: A Biographical Narrative of the Great American Orator and Agnostic
(New York, 1927), p. 2.

3
. Larson,
American Infidel
, p. 15.

4
. RGI, “Why I Am an Agnostic,”
Works
, vol. 4, p. 27.

5
. Ibid., p. 25.

6
. Ibid, p. 24.

7
. RGI, letter to
Utica Herald
, November 5, 1877, in Frank Smith,
Robert G. Ingersoll: A Life
(Buffalo, NY, 1990), p. 19.

8
. RGI, “On the Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child,”
Works
, vol. 1, pp. 377–379.

9
. RGI,
Works
, vol. 12, p. 172.

10
. Ibid., pp. 172–173.

11
. Quoted in Larson,
American Infidel
, p. 46.

12
. RGI to Ebon Clark Ingersoll, April 24, 1862, Ingersoll Papers, Illinois State Historical Library.

13
. Affidavit by Lt. Col. Meek,
Truth Seeker
, August 9, 1924, cited in Cramer,
Royal Bob
, p. 54.

14
. RGI, “An Address to the Colored People,”
Works
, vol. 9, p. 7.

15
. Ibid., p. 6.

16
. RGI,
Works
, vol. 5, p. 302.

17
. Ibid., pp. 302–303.

1
. RGI, “The Gods,”
Works
, vol. 1, p. 9.

2
. RGI, “Centennial Oration,”
Works
, vol. 9, p. 55.

3
.
Chicago Times
, June 16, 1876.

4
.
A History and Criticism of American Public Address
, ed. William Norwood Brigance (New York, 1943), pp. 370–371.

5
. Mark Twain, “The Chicago G.A.R. Festival,” in
Autobiography of Mark Twain
, ed. Harriet Elinor Smith (Berkeley, CA, 2011), vol. 1, p. 69.

6
. Abraham Lincoln,
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
(New Brunswick, NJ, 1953), vol. 5, pp. 419–420.

7
. RGI to Clint Farrell, November 9, 1884.

8
.
Commonwealth
, Topeka, Kansas, November 21, 1884.

9
.
New York Tribune
, April 4, 1885.

10
.
New York Sun
, August 26, 1876.

11
. Harry Thurston Peck, “
What Is Good English?” and Other Essays
(New York, 1899), p. 236.

12
.
New York Times
, May 24, 1880.

13
. In George E. Macdonald,
Fifty Years of Freethought
(New York, 1929), vol. 2, pp. 123–124.

14
. Sidney Warren,
American Freethought, 1860–1914
(New York, 1943), pp. 94–95.

15
. RGI, “A Tribute to Philo D. Beckwith,”
Works
, vol. 12, pp. 482–483.

16
. RGI, “A Tribute to Walt Whitman,”
Works
, vol. 12, p. 476.

17
.
Dowagiac Times
, January 19, 1893.

1
. RGI, “Superstition,”
Works
, vol. 4, pp. 325–326.

2
.
New York Times
, September 23, 1876.

3
. Ibid.

4
. RGI, “The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child,”
Works
, vol. 1, pp. 392–395.

5
. “Apostate's Creed,”
Christian Worker's Magazine
, in Cramer,
Royal Bob
, p. 128.

6
. RGI, “The Ghosts,”
Works
, vol. 1, p. 288.

7
. RGI, “The Gods,”
Works
, vol. 1, pp. 44–45.

8
. RGI, “Orthodoxy,”
Works
, vol. 2, p. 259.

9
. Herman E. Kittredge,
Ingersoll: A Biographical Appreciation
(New York, 1911).

10
. Hamlin Garland,
Roadside Meetings
(New York, 1930), p. 44.

11
. Ibid., p. 47.

12
. “Interview with Col. Robert Ingersoll,”
Truth Seeker
, September 5, 1885.

13
. Ibid.

14
. RGI, “A Tribute to Henry Ward Beecher,”
Works
, vol. 12, pp. 419, 423–424.

15
.
Boston Investigator
, July 20, 1880.

1
.
Proceedings of the National Convention to Secure the Religious Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, Held in Cincinnati, January 31 and February 1, 1872
(Philadelphia, 1872), pp. viii–x, in Morton Borden,
Jews, Turks, and Infidels
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1984), p. 69.

2
.
Chicago Tribune
, August 27, 1900, in Cramer,
Royal Bob
, p. 232.

3
. RGI, “A Lay Sermon,”
Works
, vol. 4, p. 223.

4
. RGI, “Some Interrogation Points,”
Works
, vol. 11, pp. 185–186.

5
. RGI, “Eight Hours Must Come,”
Works
, vol. 11, pp. 451–453.

6
. Charles Darwin,
The Descent of Man
, Modern Library edition combined with
On the Origin of Species
(New York, 1948), pp. 500–501.

7
. Henry Ward Beecher, “Communism Denounced,”
New York Times
, July 30, 1877.

8
. RGI, “Civil Rights,”
Works
, vol. 11, p. 2.

9
.
National Republican
, Washington, DC, October 17, 1883.

10
. “Speech to the ‘Opening Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association, January 19 and 20, 1869,'” Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

11
. RGI, “Eight Hours Must Come,” p. 487.

12
. RGI, “Should the Chinese Be Excluded?”
North American Review
, July 1893.

13
. Ibid.

14
. Ibid.

15
. RGI, “What Is Religion?”
Works
, vol. 4, p. 505.

16
. RGI, Preface to Helen Hamilton Gardener,
Men, Women, and Gods
, available at
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks30207
.

17
. “Woman's Right to Divorce,”
New York World
, 1988,
Works
, vol. 8, p. 385.

18
. Ingersoll, “Preface to ‘For Her Daily Bread,'”
Works
, vol. 12, p. 49.

19
. RGI, Preface,
Men, Women, and Gods
.

20
. RGI, “The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child,”
Works
, vol. 1, p. 371.

21
. “Working Girls,”
New York World
, December 2, 1888.

22
. Ibid.

23
. RGI, “Secular Thought,” August 25, 1898,
Works
, vol. 8, p. 391.

24
. RGI, “Secularism,”
Works
, vol. 11, p. 405.

25
. Ibid., p. 406.

26
. Herbert Spencer,
Social Statics
(New York, 1864), p. 415.

1
. RGI, “Address to the Jury in the Trial of C. B. Reynolds,”
Works
, vol. 11, p. 109.

2
. Ibid., p. 108.

3
. Ibid., p. 117.

4
.
New York Times
, May 20, 1887.

5
. D. McAllister, “Testimonies to the Religious Defect of the Constitution” (Philadelphia, 1874), quoted in Borden,
Jews, Turks, and Infidels
, p. 41.

6
. RGI, “God in the Constitution,”
Works
, vol. 11, pp. 124–125.

7
. RGI, “Thomas Paine,”
Works
, vol. 1, p. 128.

8
. Ibid., p. 134.

9
. Ibid., p. 133.

10
. Ibid., p. 153.

11
. Ibid., p. 164.

12
. Moncure Daniel Conway,
The Life of Thomas Paine
(New York, 1892), vol. 2, p. 428.

13
. RGI, “Thomas Paine,”
North American Review
, August 1892.

14
. See Michael Kazin,
A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan
(New York, 2006), pp. 9–11.

15
. RGI, “Some Mistakes of Moses,”
Works
, vol. 2, p. 31.

16
. Ibid., p. 32.

17
. RGI, “Our Schools,”
Works
, vol. 11, pp. 471–472.

1
. Susan B. Anthony,
Diary
, April 14, 1854, quoted in Carol Kolmerten,
The American Life of Ernestine Rose
(Syracuse, NY, 1999), p. 155.

2
. RGI, “At a Child's Grave,”
Works
, vol. 12, p. 400.

3
. RGI, “A Lay Sermon,”
Works
, vol. 4, p. 211.

4
. RGI to George Schilling, in Ingersoll,
Letters
, pp. 627–628.

5
. Ibid., p. 216.

6
.
The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories
, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude and J. D. Duff (New York, 1997), pp. 110–111.

7
. RGI, “Tolstoi and ‘The Kreutzer Sonata,'”
Works
, vol. 11, p. 313.

8
. RGI, “Which Way?”
Works
, vol. 3, p. 401.

9
. Ibid., pp. 448–449.

10
. RGI to Philip G. Peabody, May 27, 1890, in
The Letters of Robert G. Ingersoll
, pp. 710–711.

11
. “Vivisection,”
New York Evening Telegram
, September 30, 1893.

12
. RGI to Peabody, May 27, 1890, in Ingersoll,
Letters
, p. 711.

1
. RGI, “Argument Before the Vice-Chancellor in the Russell Case,”
Works
, vol. 10, p. 592.

2
. “Ingersoll Dead,”
New York Times
, July 22, 1899.

3
. RGI, “A Tribute to Ebon C. Ingersoll,”
Works
, vol. 12, p. 390.

4
. Ibid., p. 391.

5
. In Cramer,
Royal Bob
, p. 264.

6
. “Sermons on Ingersoll,”
Chicago Tribune
, July 24, 1899.

7
. In Cramer,
Royal Bob
, p. 189, from unedited clippings in Library of Congress, folder 5.

8
.
Truth Seeker
, October 21, 1899.

9
.
The Chicago Tribune
, July 22, 1899.

10
. In Frank Smith,
Robert G. Ingersoll: A Life
(Buffalo, NY, 1990), p. 403.

11
. In Larson,
American Infidel
, from
Arena
, March 1909.

12
. William Bentley,
The Diary of William Bentley
(Salem, MA, 1905), vol. 1, p. 82.