Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), American lawyer and lecturer, was a champion of free thought and an orator of almost magical power.

Robert Ingersoll was the son of a Vermont clergyman and spent his boyhood in a series of parish houses, first in New England, later in the Midwest. The family finally settled in Illinois, where Robert read law. In 1854 he was admitted to the bar at Shawneetown. Three years later he moved to Peoria, where he quickly established a reputation as a superlative trial lawyer. When the Civil War came, he was active in raising a volunteer regiment and in 1861 entered the Union Army as a colonel of the 11th Illinois Cavalry. He acquitted himself well in the Tennessee Valley campaigns, but in December 1862 he was captured, along with large numbers of his men. He was paroled and in June 1863 discharged from the Army.

Returning to Illinois, Ingersoll...