The most famous critic of religion during the Reconstruction period was the son of an Orthodox cleric. Robert Ingersoll was born on 11 August 1833 in Dresden, New York, where his father, Congregational minister John Ingersoll, was serving a church. His mother, Mary Livingston Ingersoll, died when Robert was two years old. The Reverend Mr. Ingersoll remarried, and when his second wife died, married a third time. During Robert's youth, the family moved frequently as his father sought a secure pastoral position. The moves took them from Ohio to Wisconsin to Illinois. Such frequent moves could have disrupted the Ingersoll children's education, but their father taught them at home. By the time he turned eighteen, Ingersoll was a teacher himself, working in Waverly, Tennessee. In 1854 he and his elder brother, Ebon, began reading law at the office of a local lawyer and Democratic.....
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