![]() ![]() His oratorical skills quickly made him a desired public speaker, and he remained so throughout his life.īut even as he found fame, he also found notoriety, for although his views on religion were at first largely unknown to the general public, he never hid them, and as his fame grew his atheism (or agnosticism, terms he saw as synonymous) came to the fore. The book does give a brief outline of Robert Ingersoll’s life, known even in his own time as “The Great Agnostic.” Born in 1833 in the small town of Dresden, New York, Ingersoll became a lawyer, a Civil War cavalry colonel, and an influential Congressman, coming to public fame in 1876 with his nomination speech of James Blaine at the Republican convention that year. It is, rather, an argument for restoring Ingersoll to a respected place in the pantheon of American thinkers. The Great Agnostic by Susan Jacoby is not a biography of Robert Ingersoll. Let me start by saying what this book is not. ![]()
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