ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL

1833-1899

Robert Green Ingersoll was born at Dresden, New York, August II, 1833. His father, a clergyman well known in New York for his broad views and more than ordinary eloquence in the pulpit, removed to Illinois in 1843. Robert, his son, chose the profession of law, and after being admitted to the bar he entered his brother's law offices as partner at Shawneetown. In 1857 Ingersoll removed to Peoria, then a rapidly growing town, and obtained in 1860 the Democratic nomination for Congress for the district, but was defeated. During the war Ingersoll was a strong partisan of the Federal cause and the Union. His military service, on which he entered as Colonel of the Eleventh Illinois Cavalry, was cut short early during the war on his capture by the enemy.

He returned to his law practice and, after having become an adherent of the Republican party, was appointed, in 1866, Attorney-General of Illinois. He was a delegate to several national conventions and gained enduring fame as an orator by the brilliant speech he delivered in support of James G. Blaine's nomination for the presidency in 1876. The designation of "The Plumed Knight" clung to the Maine Senator long after the echoes of the campaign had died away. Ingersoll was engaged as counsel in many cases of national importance, and removed first to Washington and later to New York. He died at his country seat on the Hudson on July 21, 1899.

Ingersoll was one of the foremost orators of his day. Both as a forensic debater and as a public speaker and lecturer, his well-deserved fame has long since spread over his country and beyond. Besides being the author of some prose works, mostly of an agnostic tendency, he has written some verse. In his private life he was a most lovable man, and the charm of his personality exerted a magnetic influence over all with whom he came in contact. Besides being a born orator, he was exceptionally witty, and could move his audiences to laughter as well as tears.

THE PLUMED KNIGHT

Speech nominating James G. Blaine for President, in the Republican National Convention at Cincinnati, June 15, 1876

M

ASSACHUSETTS may be satisfied with the loyalty of Benjamin H. Bristow; so am I, but if any man nominated by this convention cannot carry the State of Massachusetts, I am not satisfied with the loyalty of that State. If the nominee of this convention cannot carry the grand old commonwealth of Massachusetts by seventy-five thousand majority, I would advise them to sell out Faneuil Hall as a Democratic headquarters. I would advise them to take from Bunker Hill that old monument of glory.

The Republicans of the United States demand as their leader in the great contest of 1876 a man of intelligence, a man of integrity, a man of well-known and approved political opinions. They demand a statesman; they demand a reformer after, as well as before, the election. They demand a politician in the highest, broadest, and best sense-a man of superb moral courage. They demand a man acquainted with public affairs -with the wants of the people-with not only the requirements of the hour, but with the demands of the future. They demand a man broad enough to comprehend the relations of this government to the other nations of the earth. They demand a man well versed in the powers, duties, and prerogatives of each and every department of this government. They demand a man who will sacredly preserve the financial honor of the United States-one who knows enough to know that the national debt must be paid through the prosperity of this people; one who knows enough to know that all the financial theories in the world cannot redeem a single dollar; one who knows enough to know that all the money must be made, not by law, but by labor; one who knows enough to know that the people of the

United States have the industry to make the money and the lionor to pay it over just as fast as they make it.

The Republicans of the United States demand a man who knows that prosperity and resumption, when they come, must come together; that when they come, they will come hand in hand through the golden harvest fields, hand in hand by the whirling spindles and turning wheels; hand in hand past the open furnace doors; hand in hand by the flaming forges; hand in hand by the chimneys filled with eager fire-greeted and grasped by the countless sons of toil.

This money has to be dug out of the earth. You cannot make it by passing resolutions in a political convention.

The Republicans of the United States want a man who knows that this government should protect every citizen at home and abroad; who knows that any government that will not defend its defenders and protect its protectors is a disgrace to the map of the world. They demand a man who believes in the eternal separation and divorcement of church and school. They demand a man whose political reputation is spotless as a star; but they do not demand that their candidate shall have a certificate of moral character signed by a Confederate Congress. The man who has in full, heaped, and rounded measure, all these splendid qualifications is the present grand and gallant leader of the Republican party-James G. Blaine.

Our country crowned with the vast and marvellous achievements of its first century, asks for a man worthy of the past and prophetic of her future; asks for a man who has the audacity of genius; asks for a man who has the grandest combination of heart, conscience, and brain beneath her flag. Such a man is James G. Blaine.

For the Republican host, led by this intrepid man, there can be no defeat.

This is a grand year; a year filled with recollections of the Revolution, filled with the proud and tender memories of the past, with the sacred legends of liberty; a year in which the sons of freedom will drink from the fountains of enthusiasm ; a year in which the people call for a man who has preserved in Congress what our soldiers won upon the field; a year in which we call for the man who has torn from the throat of treason the tongue of slander-for the man who has snatched the mask of

Democracy from the hideous face of Rebellion-for the man who, like an intellectual athlete, has stood in the arena of debate and challenged all comers, and who is still a total stranger to defeat.

Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American Congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen foreheads of the defamers of his country and the maligners of his honor. For the Republicans to desert this gallant leader now is as though an army should desert their general upon the field of battle.

James G. Blaine is now, and has been for years, the bearer of the sacred standard of the Republican party. I call it sacred, because no human being can stand beneath its folds without becoming and without remaining free.

Gentlemen of the convention, in the name of the great republic, the only republic that ever existed upon the earth; in the name of all her defenders and of all her supporters; in the name of all her soldiers living; in the name of all her soldiers dead upon the field of battle; and in the name of those who perished in the skeleton clutch of famine at Andersonville and Libby, whose suffering he so vividly remembers, Illinois-Illinois nominates for the next President of this country that prince of parliamentarians, that leader of leaders, James G. Blaine.