XVI

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

MR. INGERSOLL'S ELOQUENCE WHILE Α YOUNG MAN

CANDIDACY FOR CONGRESS

HIS

HIS AGNOSTICISM A HINDRANCE

TO HIS POLITICAL ADVANCEMENT HIS ORATION AT THE
FUNERAL OF HIS BROTHER.

IT

T was in April, 1859, that for the first time I met Robert G. Ingersoll. He came over from his home in Peoria to attend the Woodford Circuit Court. He was then under thirty years of age, of splendid physique, magnetic in the fullest significance of the word, and one of the most attractive and agreeable of men. He was almost boyish in appearance, and hardly known beyond the limits of the county in which he lived. He had but recently moved to Peoria from the southern part of the State.

To those who remember him it is hardly necessary to say that even at that early day he gave unmistakable evidence of his marvellous gifts. His power over a jury was wonderful indeed; and woe betide the counsel of but mediocre talents who had Ingersoll for an antagonist in a closely contested case.

The old Court-house at Metamora is yet standing, a monument of the past; the county seat removed, it has long since fallen from its high estate. In my boyhood, I have more than once heard Mr. Lincoln at its bar, and later was a practitioner there myself—and State's Attorney for the Circuit,— when Mr. Ingersoll was an attendant upon its courts. Rarely at any time or place have words been spoken more eloquent than fell from the lips of Lincoln and of Ingersoll in that now deserted Court-house, in the years long gone by.

The first appearance of Mr. Ingersoll in the political arena was in the Presidential struggle of 1860. In his later years he was a Republican, but in the contest just mentioned he was the earnest advocate of the election of Mr. Douglas to the Presidency and was himself the Democratic candidate for

Congress in the Peoria District. His competitor was Judge Kellogg, a gentleman of well-known ability and many years' experience in Congress. Immediately upon his nomination, Ingersoll challenged Kellogg to a series of joint debates. The challenge was accepted, and the debates which followed were a rare treat to the throngs who heard them. The discussions turned upon the vital issues yet pending at the outbreak of the Civil War, issues which were to find their final determination on the field of battle. Possibly, with the exception of the historic debates two years earlier, between Lincoln and Douglas, the country has known no abler discussion of great questions. It was then for the first time that Ingersoll displayed the marvellous forensic powers that at a later dayand upon a different arena - gave him world-wide renown.

It was at a period subsequent to that just mentioned that he became an agnostic. I recall no expression of his during the early years of our acquaintance that indicated a departure from the faith in which he had been reared. That his extreme views upon religious subjects, and his manner, exceedingly offensive at times, of expressing them, formed an insuperable barrier to his political advancement, cannot be doubted. But for his unbelief, what political honors might have awaited him cannot certainly be known. But recalling the questions then under discussion, the intensity of party feeling, and the enthusiasm that his marvellous eloquence never failed to arouse in the thousands who hung upon his words, it is probable that the most exalted station might have been attained. To those familiar with the political events of that day, it is known that the antagonism aroused by his assaults upon the citadel of the faith sacred to the many, compassed his defeat in his candidature in 1868 for the Governorship of Illinois. His explanation was, that his defeat was caused by a slight difference of opinion between himself and some of the brethren upon the highly exciting question of total depravity.

Some years later, the nominee of his party for the Presidency was exceedingly obnoxious to him. Meeting the Colonel the morning after the adjournment of the conven

tion, I inquired, "Are you happy?" To this he replied, that he was somewhat in the condition of a very profane youth who had just got religion at a backwoods camp-meeting. Soon after his conversion, the preacher, taking him affectionately by the hand, inquired: "My young friend, are you very happy?" "Well, parson," replied the only halfconverted youth, "I am not damn happy, just happy, that's all."

His only brother was for many years a Representative in Congress from Illinois. Clark Ingersoll was himself able and eloquent, but overshadowed by the superior gifts of his younger brother, the subject of this sketch. The death of the former was to Colonel Ingersoll a sorrow which remained with him to the last. The funeral occurred in Washington in the summer of 1879, and of the pall-bearers selected by Colonel Ingersoll for the last sad service to his brother, were men well known in public life, one of whom but two years later, while President of the United States, fell by the hand of an assassin.

From a Washington paper of the day succeeding the funeral of Clark Ingersoll, the following is taken: "When Colonel Ingersoll ceased speaking the pall-bearers, Senator Allison, Senator David Davis, Senator Blaine, Senator Voorhees, Representatives Garfield of Ohio, Morrison, Boyd, and Stevenson of Illinois, bore the casket to the hearse and the lengthy cortège proceeded to the Oak Hill Cemetery where the remains were interred."

The occasion was one that will not easily pass from my memory. There was no service whatever save the funeral oration which has found its way into all languages. I stood by the side of Colonel Ingersoll near the casket during its delivery, and vividly recall his deep emotion, and the faltering tones in which the wondrous sentences were uttered. It is probable that this oration has no counterpart in literature. It seemed in very truth the knell of hope, the expression of a grief that could know no surcease, the agony of a parting that could know no morrow.

In such an hour how cheerless and comfortless these words: