Ingersoll

admitted to the bar in Philadelphia in 1773.
After his return to America, a friend of the fam-
ily, Joseph Reed, president of the newly created
supreme executive council of Pennsylvania, in-
vited him to look after the interest of Reed's
clients at Philadelphia. With this auspicious be-
ginning as a member of the Philadelphia bar, he
soon became one of the most distinguished law-
yers of the city in an age when Philadelphia
boasted the finest legal talent of the country. He
was attorney for Stephen Girard, merchant, and
Senator William Blount, against whom impeach-
ment proceedings were brought in 1797. He was
admitted in 1791 to the bar of the Supreme Court
of the United States. During the next year he
was counsel for Georgia in the case of Chisholm
vs. Georgia (2 Dallas, 419), the first of a num-
ber of cases argued by him involving various
phases of federal relations. In opposition to
Alexander Hamilton, in 1796 he was an attorney
in the first case involving the question of the
constitutionality of an act of Congress (Hylton
vs. United States, 3 Dallas, 171). He was also
counsel in cases connected with foreign relations
as affected by constitutional law and the juris-
diction of the courts, notably Mcllvaine vs.
Coxe's Lessee (2 Cranch, 280, and 4 Cranch,
209).

Meanwhile Ingersoll had held many public of-
fices. In 1780 he was elected a member of the
Continental Congress and by 1785 he was taking
an active part in the agitation for revising or
supplanting the Articles of Confederation. He
was a delegate to the Federal Convention of
1787, but took little part in its deliberations.
William Pierce said of him: "Mr. Ingersol speaks
well, and comprehends his subject fully. There
is a modesty in his character that keeps him
back" (Max Farrand, The Records of the Fed-
eral Convention of 1787, 1911, III, 91). In local
politics he was a member of the Philadelphia
Common Council in 1789 and from 1798 to 1801
he was city solicitor. From 1790 to 1799 and
again from 1811 to 1817 he was attorney general
of Pennsylvania; for a short time (1800-01) he
was United States district attorney for Pennsyl-
vania; and in 1811 he was nominated by Penn-
sylvania Federalists for the vice-presidency.
From March 1821 until his death in 1822 he was
presiding judge of the district court for the city
and county of Philadelphia. In politics he was
at first inclined toward democratic views but
the events of 1801 seem to have been considered
by him "the great subversion/' and thereafter in
so far as he took part in politics it was as a Fed-
eralist. His main interest, however, was always
the law. Of his three surviving children, one

Ingersoll

was Charles Jared Ingersoll [#.£/.]. Another son,
Joseph Reed Ingersoll, well known at the Phila-
delphia bar, was briefly minister to England in
Fillmore's administration.
§ [For the early life of Jared Ingersoll, see the life of
his father, L. H. Gipson, Jared Ingersoll: A Study of
Am. Loyalism in Relation to British Colonial Govern-
ment (i92p).t There are good accounts of the impor-
tant constitutional cases with which he was connected
in Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in U. S. Hist.
(1922), vol. I. See also: W. M. Meigs, The Life of
Chas. Jared Ingersoll (1897) ; [Horace Binney], Lead-
ers of the Old Bar of Phila, (1859); Vital Records of
New Haven, 1649-1850, pt. I (1917), p. 295; F. B.
Dexter, Biog. Sketches of the Grads of Yale Coll., vol.
Ill (1903) ; L. D. Avery, A GeneaL of the Ingersoll
Family in America (1926) ; J. T. Scharf and T. West-
cott, Hist, of Phila. (1884), vol. II.] w.B.
INGERSOLL, ROBERT GREEN (Aug. 11,
I833-July 21, 1899), lawyer and lecturer, was
best known to his contemporaries as "the great
agnostic." He was descended from Richard In-
gersoll, who settled in Salem, Mass., in 1629.
His father, John Ingersoll, born in Vermont and
a graduate of Middlebury College, was a clergy-
man who served in turn many Congregational
and Presbyterian churches; in the manse of one
of these, at Dresden, N. Y., Robert Green Inger-
soll was born. His mother, Mary, daughter of
Judge Robert Livingston, was no more than an
ideal of sentiment to Robert, since she died in
his infancy. John Ingersoll, orthodox in his be-
lief, was unable to steer his son into the channels
of mental regularity. While the latter was yet
a boy the family moved to Ohio, to Wisconsin,
and then to Illinois, where at the age of twenty-
one he was admitted to the bar at Shawneetown.
He spoke often in terms of respect for his father
and veneration for his mother, but he rarely re-
lated the details of a childhood that seems to
have been harsh and narrow. He was essentially
a self-made man, finding companionship in his
brother, Ebon Clark Ingersoll, with whom he
practised law, later a representative in Congress
from Illinois (1864-71), and in his wife, Eva
Amelia Parker, as free a thinker as himself,
whom he married on Feb. 13, 1862. He had two
daughters who, with grand-children and rela-
tives, made him in his later years the center of
a patriarchal group.
Ingersoll moved from Shawneetown to Peoria
in 1857 and soon became a leader at the bar and
a distinguished pleader before juries. His talents
brought him the post of attorney-general of Illi-
nois, 1867-69; but before he reached that dignity
his career was interrupted by military service.
He assisted in raising and became colonel of the
nth Illinois volunteer cavalry regiment, which
was mustered into Federal service on Dec. 20,
1861. His command saw duty in the Tennessee
Valley campaign, at Shiloh and at Corinth, and