Rhetoric & Public Affairs Jun 2016

Sacred Symbols, Public Memory, and the Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll Remembers the Civil War

Paul Stob

Abstract

Abstract In the decades after the Civil War, countless Americans saw the bloody conflict as some kind of message from God. These perceptions created a problem for the preeminent Republican orator of the day, Robert Ingersoll, who was also a fierce opponent of revealed religion. In speaking for the Republican Party during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, Ingersoll managed to interact successfully with religiously structured memories of the war while maintaining his reputation as the Great Agnostic. This essay explores how he was able to do so. Drawing on Kenneth Burke’s work on the rhetoric of religion, I argue that Ingersoll interacted with Civil War memory by redirecting supernatural terms to natural and sociopolitical contexts. In so doing he imbued political culture with a sacred character that allowed believers, nonbelievers, and people of various persuasions to participate in memories of the war. In the end, Ingersoll’s oratory modeled a “pluralistic civil religion,” which employs religious language for civic ends but eschews references to the divine as a way of accommodating a range of beliefs.

Journal
Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Published
2016-06-01
DOI
10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.2.0275
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
Topics
modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism public rhetoric
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

  1. Lee (2020)
    Theistnormativity and the Negation of American Atheists in Presidential Inaugur…
    Rhetoric & Public Affairs
  2. Manthey (2020)
    A Violent Peace and America’s Copperhead Legacy
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly

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