Scope and Content Note
The papers of Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) span the years 1826-1940, with the bulk of the material dated 1866-1899. The collection is organized in nine series: Diaries, Family Correspondence, Letterbooks, General Correspondence, Speeches and Writings File, Legal File, Scrapbooks, Miscellany, and Oversize.
The papers reflect all phases of Ingersoll's public life, including his lecture schedule and legal career as well as his private life, in particular personal ties with his immediate family and extended household. The collection contains diary notes and daybook entries, correspondence, letterbooks, literary and lecture manuscripts, scrapbooks, and miscellaneous financial, legal, and personal items. The Family Correspondence series is especially rich and includes Ingersoll's letters to his brother, Ebon C. Ingersoll, and to his in-laws, Clinton Pinckney Farrell and Sue Parker Farrell. Full sets of letters written by Ingersoll to his daughters, Maud Ingersoll Probasco and Eva Ingersoll Brown, and to members of his household, both as collective addressees, are also included in the series. Following Ingersoll's death in 1899, family correspondence is addressed to his wife, Eva, to his daughters, and to the Farrells.
The papers provide almost no documentation of Ingersoll's formative years, nor do they contain much information concerning his duty as cavalry officer for the Eleventh Illinois Volunteers Regiment during the Civil War. After the war, Ingersoll returned home to Peoria, Illinois, where he resumed his law practice and became active in state politics. In 1867, Governor Richard J. Oglesby appointed Ingersoll as attorney general of Illinois for a two-year term. An important group of letters written by Ingersoll to his brother, Ebon, United States Representative from Illinois (1864-1871), provides the fullest documentation of the immediate post-Civil War years, chronicling his involvement in Illinois state politics, including his abortive attempt to secure the gubernatorial nomination of the Republican Party in 1868.
Following his defeat for the nomination, Ingersoll worked for Ebon's reelection to Congress, speaking at rallies and counseling his brother on political strategy. Their letters demonstrate the degree of political support that Ingersoll provided during the campaign and also contain comments on broader aspects of national political life, including Reconstruction, tariff restrictions, and the impeachment proceedings against Andrew Johnson.
Ingersoll and his brother shared a very close relationship. The letters to Ebon give voice to joys and depressions, sympathies and irritations, and loyalties and animosities. Several letters also provide glimpses into the depth of Ingersoll's anti-religious convictions at the beginning of his agnostic crusade.
A description of the anguish felt by Ingersoll upon Ebon's death, May 31, 1879, is portrayed in letters written to his in-laws, Clinton and Sue Farrell. Clinton Farrell also acted as Ingersoll's business manager and publisher, and material in the Farrells's family correspondence files refers to the publication and distribution of Ingersoll's published works, as well as to various aspects of his lecture tours.
It was a nominating speech on behalf of James Gillespie Blaine at the Republican convention at Cincinnati in 1876 that had launched Ingersoll into national prominence as a gifted political orator. Thereafter, Ingersoll's rhetorical skills were always in great demand by the Republican Party, and the General Correspondence series contains some material both on his 1876 speech and on importunings by the party for Ingersoll's participation during subsequent political campaigns. The same series also provides information concerning Ingersoll's support of the gold standard during the 1896 presidential campaign.
Ingersoll's attacks on religion and the controversy they engendered limited his role as a campaign orator. Known as "the great agnostic," Ingersoll's fame was based, instead, on a series of lectures on religion and science, which were delivered as a counterforce against religious orthodoxy. Selected titles of these lectures include "Myth and Miracle," "The Gods," and "Why I Am an Agnostic," and are contained in the Speeches and Writings File. Ingersoll's speeches also included elegiac tributes, literary lectures on Robert Burns, William Shakespeare, and others, after-dinner speeches, and addresses on general social and cultural topics. Examples of these can also be found in the Speeches and Writings File. Ingersoll likewise received many letters from people who either challenged his agnosticism, questioned his motives, or prayed for his redemption. This material is located in the General Correspondence.
During his lecture tours, Ingersoll regularly wrote to his daughters and to other members of his extended household, including the Farrells, Ingersoll's mother-in-law, Harriette Lyon Parker, and Sue Sharkey, the family's longtime housekeeper and governess. The letters are located in the Family Correspondence series and contain Ingersoll's thoughts and observations while on the lecture circuit, his counsel and instruction for living happy, healthy lives, and assurances of his continued devotion with affectionate terms of endearment.
Ingersoll was also a successful lawyer who commanded large fees for his services. A residue of his legal papers and printed copies of his legal briefs are located in the Legal File series. Letters written by Ingersoll to his brother and law partner, Ebon, also provide detail into the legal cases in which Ingersoll was involved. The Diary series includes several daybooks that should also be consulted for legal case entries.
A series of Letterbooks includes copies of outgoing letters signed by Robert and Ebon Ingersoll and others. Prior to their acquisition by the Library, the letterbooks suffered water damage and a number of the letters are completely illegible. Enough remain readable, however, to provide substantial documentation of the day-to-day operations of Ingersoll's legal and lecturing careers, as well as insight into his anti-religious philosophy and personal life. A series of Scrapbooks, containing primarily newspaper clippings, but with occasional letters, notes, and manuscript drafts included, also chronicles Ingersoll's life as orator, agnostic, lawyer, and political campaigner.
After 1899, material in the Family Correspondence series addressed to Ingersoll's wife, Eva, to his daughter, and to the Farrells, is concerned with the defense and promotion of Ingersoll's legacy. Other topics of interest that occur during this period include Eva Ingersoll's efforts on behalf of women's suffrage and Maud Probasco's support of antivivisection societies. Probasco also acted as secretary for the Ingersoll League, an organization whose purpose was to advance Ingersoll's philosophies, largely through the promotion of his published works. Records belonging to the league can be found in Probasco's family correspondence file and also in the Miscellany series.
Ingersoll and his family corresponded with a wide range of cultural, literary, and political figures of the day, including Edgar Fawcett, Henry M. Field, George Jacob Holyoake, Eduard Reményi, and Horace Traubel. A selection of other correspondents includes James Gillespie Blaine, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Paul Blouët (Max O'Rell), Edward William Bok, John Burroughs, Benjamin F. Butler, Andrew Carnegie, Moncure Daniel Conway, Eugene V. Debs, Thomas Dixon, Minnie Maddern Fiske, Melville W. Fuller, Walter Quinton Gresham, John Marshall Harlan, Rutherford Bichard Hayes, John E. Mulholland, Richard J. Oglesby, Courtlandt Palmer, Parker Pillsbury, James Redpath, Thomas B. Reed, Anton Seidl, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman.