Today in New Jersey history
May 19, 1887: Robert Ingersoll, Civil War veteran officer, nationally prominent attorney, and leading American agnostic, arrived by train in Morristown to defend Charles B. Reynolds. Reynolds, a former Methodist minister, had held a tent meeting in Boonton, not to spread religion, but to attack it. He, in turn, was attacked by a mob of religious folks, primarily Methodists and Catholics, and subsequently arrested and charged, under a colonial statute, with “blasphemy.” Although Ingersoll’s case, challenging the very existence of such a law on the basis of free speech, made eminent sense, his client was found guilty when the judge told the jury they could not contest the law itself, but only determine if it had been violated. Ingersoll took the case pro bono and paid the $25 fine and $50 court costs assessed against his client. When leaving the courtroom he commented to a reporter that “the law was made up by the bigoted baboons of the past and enforced by the religious donkeys of the present.”
