1876: Robert Ingersoll inspires Lew Wallace

The crowded train heading towards the 1876 Indianapolis Republican Convention bore two renowned ex-soldiers: one of them was Robert Ingersoll, an evangelical atheist at least as famous in his day as Richard Dawkins is in ours, the other being Lew Wallace, the man who was to become governor of New Mexico two years later (see 1879: Lew Wallace promises to pardon Billy the Kid)

Ingersoll had served in the American Civil War under General Wallace as a colonel at the bloody battle of Shiloh, and later distinguished himself in mopping up Confederate guerilla bands, before being captured. Wallace describes their later chance encounter on the train in his preface to The First Christmas (1902): ‘There was a knock on the door . . ., and someone called my name. Upon answer, the door opened, and I saw Colonel Robert G Ingersoll looking comfortable as might be considering the sultry weather. ‘Was it you who called me Colonel?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Come in, I feel like talking.’ I leaned against the cheek of the door, and said, ‘Well, if you let me dictate the subject, I will come in.’ ‘Certainly, that’s exactly what I want.’ I took seat by him, and began: ‘Is there a God?’ Quick as a flash, he replied, ‘I don’t know: do you?’ And then I – ‘Is there a Devil?’ And he -’I don’t know: do you?’ ‘Is there a Heaven?’ ‘I don’t know, do you?’ ‘Is there a Hell?’ ‘I don’t know, do you?’ ‘Is there a Hereafter?’ ‘I don’t know, do you?’ I finished, saying, ‘There, Colonel, you have the texts. Now go.’

And go Ingersoll did. Ingersoll was one of the greatest orators of his day (an engraving depicts him in scary full flow at Walt Whitman’s funeral), and here he was on his pet subject: the non-existence of God. Ingersoll spoke for two hours, only stopping when the train stopped. Says Wallace: ‘He surpassed himself, and that is saying a great deal’.

Up until that point, Wallace’s attitude to religion had been one of ‘absolute indifference’ but the weight of Ingersoll’s rhetoric drove him to study religion – and, as he puts it ‘with results-first, the book Ben Hur and second, a conviction amounting to absolute belief in God and the Divinity of Christ’.

What Happened Next

In between dealing with dozens of bad hats as New Mexico governor, Wallace wrote Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, which came out in 1880 and remains in print, one of the world’s bestsellers. It was the first work of fiction to be blessed by a pope, and has been filmed four times (It is not the bestselling American book ever, as is often claimed: Gone With the Wind outsold it in the 1930s). Robert Ingersoll died true to his atheist principles, despite the claims of those who wish to claim him for agnosticism. His works are all available online at the splendid website www.infidels.org.