{
  "schema": "tga.work.v1",
  "identifier": "dresden:vol-9:speech-at-cincinnati",
  "slug": "speech-at-cincinnati",
  "title": "Speech at Cincinnati",
  "subtitle": "The Republican National Convention, 1876.",
  "excerpt": "Context and background for the Blaine nomination at the 1876 Republican Convention in Cincinnati — the dramatic setting for the Plumed Knight speech that followed.",
  "year": 1876,
  "volume": 9,
  "category": "Political",
  "author": {
    "name": "Robert G. Ingersoll",
    "wikidata": "Q360326",
    "viaf": "44331023"
  },
  "isPartOf": {
    "title": "The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll",
    "edition": "Dresden Edition",
    "publisher": "C. P. Farrell",
    "year": 1900
  },
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/",
  "url": "https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/speech-at-cincinnati/",
  "wordCount": 401,
  "body": "• The nomination of Blaine was the passionately dramatic\n    scene of the day. Robert G. Ingersoll had been fixed upon to\n    present Blaine's name to the Convention, and, as the result\n    proved, a more effective champion could not have been\n    selected in the whole party conclave.\n    As the clerk, running down the list, reached Maine, an\n    extraordinary event happened. The applause and cheers which\n    had heretofore broken out in desultory patches of the\n    galleries and platform, broke in a simultaneous, thunderous\n    outburst from every part of the house.\n    Ingersoll moved out from the obscure corner and advanced to\n    the central stage. As he walked forward the thundering\n    cheers, sustained and swelling, never ceased. As he reached\n    the platform they took on an increased volume of sound, and\n    for ten minutes the surging fury of acclamation, the wild\n    waving of fans, hats, and handkerchiefs transformed the\n    scene from one of deliberation to that of a bedlam of\n    rapturous delirium. Ingersoll waited with unimpaired\n    serenity, until he should get a chance to be heard.   *\n    And then began an appeal, impassioned, artful, brilliant,\n    and persuasive.   *\n    Possessed of a fine figure, a face of winning, cordial\n    frankness, Ingersoll had half won his audience before he\n    spoke a word. It is the attestation of every man that heard\n    him, that so brilliant a master stroke was never uttered\n    before a political Convention. Its effect was indescribable.\n    The coolest-headed in the hall were stirred to the wildest\n    expression. The adversaries of Blaine, as well as his\n    friends, listened with unswerving, absorbed attention.\n    Curtis sat spell-bound, his eyes and mouth wide open, his\n    figure moving in unison to the tremendous periods that fell\n    in a measured, exquisitely graduated flow from the\n    Illinoisan's smiling lips. The matchless method and manner\n    of the man can never be imagined from the report in type. To\n    realize the prodigious force, the inexpressible power, the\n    irrestrainable fervor of the audience requires actual sight.\n    Words can do but meagre justice to the wizard power of this\n    extraordinary man. He swayed and moved and impelled and\n    restrained and worked in all ways with the mass before him\n    as if he possessed some key to the innermost mechanism that\n    moves the human heart, and when he finished, his fine, frank\n    face as calm as when he began, the overwrought thousands\n    sank back in an exhaustion of unspeakable wonder and\n    delight.—Chicago Times, June 16, 1876.\n"
}