The Great Agnostic (26 page)

socialism,
70
,
158

social issues,
31
,
103
–5,
186
; religion-sanctioned injustices and,
199
–200; secular humanist beliefs and,
97
–98,
125
–26; social Darwinist beliefs and,
24
,
106
,
107
,
126
–27.
See also
labor movement

Socialist Party,
11
,
109

Society for Ethical Culture,
90

Society for the Suppression of Vice,
99
,
100
n

Solomon,
38
–39

“Some Mistakes of Moses” (Ingersoll lecture),
14
,
89
–90,
114
; Yiddish translation of,
28
,
70

sound recording,
97
n

Spadefore, Joseph,
190
–91

Spanish-American War,
95
,
98
,
150

species: emergence of new,
81
n; extinction of,
94

Spencer, Herbert,
24
,
25
,
106
,
115
,
126
–27

Spinoza, Baruch,
192
,
196

Stalinism,
169

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady,
10
,
29
,
32
,
107
,
113
–14,
118
,
121
–22;
Woman's Bible
,
122

Stark, Pete,
55
–56

“Star Route” trials (early 1880s),
101
–2

state governments: anti-contraceptive laws and,
186
; equal protection rights and,
134
; establishment clause and,
64
–65,
136
; federal tensions with,
136
; free speech/religion guarantees by,
133
–34; religion-based laws of,
131
,
136
,
137
–38

Stockton (California) Daily Record
,
181

suffering: animal vivisection and,
189
,
203
–5; divine origin belief about,
86
–89,
95
,
157
,
199
–200; human efforts against,
201
–2; science-based alleviation of,
78
–79,
86
–87

suffrage.
See
voting rights; woman suffrage movement

Sumner, William Graham,
106
–7

Sunderland, Rev. J. T.,
181
–82

supernaturalism: Ingersoll indictment of,
58
,
85
–86,
95
–96,
163
,
167
,
173
; scientific advances vs.,
79
–80,
85
–86,
96
,
167
–68

superstition,
79
–80,
91
,
120
,
167

Supreme Court, U.S.,
110
–11,
112
,
115
,
134

“survival of the fittest,”
24
,
25
.
See also
social Darwinism

Talmage, Rev. Thomas DeWitt,
54
–55

tax policy,
103
,
150
; Catholic bid for religious school support and,
4
n,
64
–66,
67
,
70
,
100
–101,
153
,
154
,
183
,
185
; public schools and,
64
–65,
70
,
106
,
154
,
155
; religious institution exemptions and,
64
–65,
67
,
70
,
99

technology.
See
science and technology

temperance movement,
122

Tennessee,
23

Texas,
71

Texas State Board of Education,
188

textbooks,
23
,
183
,
187
–88,
201

theater,
160

theocracy,
58
,
98
,
129
,
136
,
200
,
201

theodicy problem,
86
–89

Tolstoy, Leo,
164
–66; “The Kreutzer Sonata,”
164
–66

torture,
199

Transcendentalists,
172

Triangle Shirtwaist fire (NYC, 1911),
105

Truth Seeker
(freethought publication),
41
,
91
,
99
,
100
n,
152
; Ingersoll eulogies roundup by,
179
–80

Tubman, Harriet,
32

Twain, Mark,
10
,
61

tyranny,
143
–44,
145

unalienable rights,
128

Underground Railroad,
50

Union Army,
51
–52,
61

Unitarians,
16
,
32
,
139
,
172
,
181
–82

Universalists,
32
,
133
,
139

vaccination,
78

Vaseline (as contraceptive),
100
n,
152
n,
186

Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786),
154

vivisection,
169
–70,
199
,
200
; Ingersoll letter (1890) on,
203
–5

Volney, Constantin,
The Ruins
,
62

Voltaire,
73
,
74
,
113
,
129
,
130
n,
173
,
184
,
192
,
196
,
199
;
Dictionnaire Philosophique Portatif
,
130

voting rights,
112
,
113
–14.
See also
woman suffrage movement

Wagner, Richard, Siegfried's “Funeral March,”
175

Wallace, Rev. George A.,
178

Warren, Sidney,
72

Washington, DC,
33
,
101
,
112
,
160

Washington, George,
19
,
20
,
30
n,
132
,
137
,
147
,
155

Washington Post
,
179

“watchmaker” argument,
37
–38,
86

wealth disparities,
6
,
24
,
107
,
149
–50,
162
–63

White, Ronald C.,
Lincoln's Greatest Speech
,
62
n

White House,
112

Whitman, Walt,
10
,
45
–46,
73
,
74
,
75
,
161
; Comstock obscenity charges and,
152
–53; “The Common Prostitute,”
156
; Ingersoll eulogy for,
75
,
206
–11;
Leaves of Grass
,
152
–53

Whittier, John Greenleaf, “The Preacher,”
52
–53

“With His Name Left Out, The History of Liberty Cannot Be Written” (Ingersoll lecture),
18

Woman's Bible
(Stanton),
122

woman suffrage movement,
29
,
32
,
113
–14,
118
,
122
,
124

women: Christian asceticism and,
164
,
165
; Ingersoll's belief in intellectual equality of,
117
,
123
; moral conventions and,
124
–25,
152
,
200
;
nineteenth-century role of,
33
–34; religiosity as group of,
119
–20

Women's Christian Temperance Union,
122

women's rights,
6
,
34
,
39
,
68
,
109
,
117
–25,
171
–72,
200
; birth control as precondition for,
118
–19,
127
,
152
,
171
; divorce and,
120
–21; economic justice and,
105
,
124
–25; educational opportunity and,
119
–20; Ingersoll's last court case defending,
171
–72.
See also
feminist movement; woman suffrage movement

workers.
See
labor movement

Yale University,
106
–7,
154

yellow fever,
94

*
This remark was made by former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, a devout and devoutly conservative Catholic, on a Sunday morning television news show in February 2012. He was, ironically, disparaging John F. Kennedy, the nation's first Catholic president, for having famously told a group of Protestant ministers during his 1960 campaign that he believed “in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute—where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference.” Earlier in the week, after President Barack Obama had suggested that every American ought to be able to go to college, Santorum's reaction was, “What a snob!”

*
For Crawford's memories of Ingersoll and of the early days of baseball, see Lawrence S. Ritter's
The Glory of Their Times,
chapter 4.

*
I learned this while writing a weekly column, “The Spirited Atheist,” for the
On Faith
blog published by the
Washington Post.
The emails I receive from outraged fundamentalists generally begin with an assertion that goes something like, “You claim to know that there is no God, but you have no proof.…” Readers who insist on calling themselves agnostics rather than atheists often voice the same misapprehension and suggest that it is “arrogant” to claim absolute knowledge of the nonexistence of a deity. But I do not claim to possess that knowledge, any more than Ingersoll or Paine did. To the fundamentalists I reply that while there is no evidentiary proof of a negative, there is also no evidentiary proof (other than inadmissible supernatural propositions) of the existence of God. To agnostics who object to the word “atheist,” I suggest that they consult Ingersoll and the dictionary.

*
The gigantic exception to this tendency was Richard Hofstadter, whose
Social Darwinism in American Thought
(1944) and
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
(1963) remain required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the continuing importance of the battle between religious fundamentalism and modernism in American politics.

*
The Seneca Falls
Declaration of Rights and Sentiments
was written by Stanton, in consultation with Mott, at her kitchen table and was modeled after the Declaration of Independence and the American Anti-Slavery Association's founding document, written in 1833 by William Lloyd Garrison and titled
Declaration of Sentiments.

*
The increase in the number of Americans who do not belong to any church and who consider their outlook on public affairs wholly or predominantly secular was first reported in the
American Religious Identification Survey
conducted by the City University of New York in 2001. The trend has continued during the past decade.

†
Ingersoll's mother, who died when he was only two and a half years old, was a collateral descendent of the prominent New York revolutionary figure Robert R. Livingston, who administered the oath of office to George Washington in 1789, when New York City was the nation's capital.

*
The history of slavery in areas where it was practiced in the North can be even touchier than it is in the South. When I toured Rose Hill, which has been restored by the Geneva Historical Society, in 2001, the guide did not mention that David Selden Rose was a slaveholder. Only when I returned to New York City and began doing some background research in the History and Genealogy section of the New York Public Library did I discover that this had been a plantation in every historical sense of the word.

*
The extension of slavery into new territories was the crux of the famous 1858 debates between Lincoln and the incumbent Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas. Although Douglas won the Illinois election, the debates, which were widely publicized and reprinted throughout the country, catapulted Lincoln to national prominence and launched his campaign for the presidency in 1860.

*
In “The Preacher,” one of Whittier's many well-known antislavery poems, the lines quoted by Ingersoll are followed by:
And begged for the love of Christ, the gold, / Coined from the hearts in its groaning hold. / What could it matter, more or less / Of strikes, and hunger, and weariness? / Living or dying, bond or free / What was time to eternity?

*
Many historians have suggested that Franklin D. Roosevelt used Ingersoll's “Plumed Knight” speech as the model for his 1928 “Happy Warrior” speech nominating New York's governor Al Smith as the Democratic presidential candidate in 1928.

*
Hundreds of books have been devoted solely to analyzing the purported religious, or antireligious, beliefs of Lincoln. Even a glancing survey makes clear the lack of agreement about the sixteenth president's true views:
Abraham Lincoln, the Ideal Christian
(1913);
Lincoln the Freethinker
(1924);
Abraham Lincoln and Hillel's Golden Rule
(1929);
Abraham Lincoln: Fatalist, Skeptic, Atheist, or Christian?
(1942);
The Religion of Abraham Lincoln
(1963);
Abraham Lincoln, Theologian of American Anguish
(1973); and
Lincoln's Greatest Speech
(2002). The last book, by Ronald C. White, dean and professor of religious history at San Francisco State University, offers a religious exegesis of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.