Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes
It always has been and forever will be impossible for slavery or any kind or form of injustice to produce a great poet.
Ingersoll, Robert G. The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume 3. Dresden Publishing Company, 1902, p. 255.
The issue of slavery which had been suppressed in Congress for the first decades of the nation broke out when Missouri statehood was considered. By previous agreement, slavery was not even discussed in Congress but the time period elapsed. Tallmadge not only proposed that no more slaves could come into Missouri {613176} but most shocking to the Southerners was that every person born in the new state would be free at the age of 25. In a generation, there would be no more slavery in Missouri and there would be no economic compensation for slave owners at all. The House of Representatives accepted the amendment, but it failed in the Senate. At that time, Senators were not elected by voters but were appointed by the state legislators and the Southern slave states had a disproportionate share of the senate from a population point of view. But what this quotation shows clearly that a majority of the country in 1819 were opposed to slavery and were willing to end it without compensation.
Although English, Cobett spent time in America and published a newspaper, The Porcupine Gazette, in Philadelphia. We was very conservative but on the issue of slavery his resembled a liberal point of view. He never used sugar, coffee, or rum because slave labor produced them. However, he advocated legally enslaving lazy people, blacks and whites, who would not work.
The city he represented had, under his leadership, declared itself a nuclear-free zone, protested apartheid in front of the South African embassy in Washington, fought for rent-control during a period of soaring rents, and became known as "the Berkeley of the East":
Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll was an American lawyer, a Civil War veteran, political leader, and orator of the United States during the Golden Age of Free Thought, noted for his broad range of culture and his defense of agnosticism. He was nicknamed "The Great Agnostic". Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
