The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

This collection captures Robert G. Ingersoll at his most brilliant and combative: a freethinker, reformer, and public intellectual sparring with the great controversies of his age. In interviews on religion, politics, labor, women's rights, censorship, and social reform, he defends reason, science, and free inquiry against dogma, fear, and political opportunism. He rejects biblical authority, questions immortality with candor, condemns revivalist manipulation, and insists that Christians, Jews, Deists, and atheists stand equal before the law. The volume also shows Ingersoll as a practical political voice, arguing for honest money, stable credit, public works, and fair treatment of workers during economic upheaval. He confronts sectional tensions, defends fair trials and mercy in the Anarchists' case, and treats liberty as the foundation of civilization. Alongside these debates are vivid cultural reflections on Europe, modern art, the theater, and the Church's hostility to the stage, as well as admiring portraits of independent statesmen like Roscoe Conkling and a spirited defense of public lecture and dramatic expression. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.