Robert G. Ingersoll

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833–1899) was an American lawyer, Civil War veteran, and celebrated public speaker nicknamed “The Great Agnostic.” Born in Dresden, New York, he was raised by his father, a Congregational minister, and later settled in Illinois, where he built a successful legal practice. During the Civil War he served in the Union Army, rising to colonel before being captured and paroled. Ingersoll became one of the nation’s most sought-after lecturers, championing freethought, secularism, and religious liberty, and speaking widely on politics, science, and culture. A Republican, he supported abolition and argued for women’s rights.