Robert Green Ingersoll Gives "What Must We Do to Be Saved?" Lecture in Hornellsville

On May 5, 1894, Robert Green Ingersoll made his final appearance at the Shattuck Opera House in Hornellsville to deliver his patriotic lecture "Lincoln," which he had delivered the previous night at the Corning Opera House. Was the great orator loath to repeat a lecture he'd presented the night before? Did the Shattuck's freethinking owner put him up to it? No one knows, but Ingersoll stepped onstage and asked the audience whether they preferred for him to deliver "Lincoln" or to reprise "What Must We Do to Be Saved?," the hard-hitting speech he'd presented to such effect in that hall at the 1880 freethought convention.

"[T]he 'What Shall I [sic.] Do to be Saved' element responded so much louder than the 'Lincoln' people, that the speaker decided that the first was the popular choice," reported the Hornellsville Times. "It was an outrage," the newspaper opined, "in that the majority went to hear one lecture, and had another (and such a one;) forced upon them." Some devout persons walked out; others remained and were reportedly quite offended. As for "the infidels and agnostics present," the paper noted with disdain that they "laughed and pounded their canes on the floor in order to give force to their approval." All in all, a novel illustration of the divides riving Ingersoll's audiences.

Many thanks to Alice Taychert of the Southern Tier Library System and Timothy Binga of the CFI Libraries for research assistance.