March 4
Robert Emmet
On this date in 1778, Robert Emmet, the Irish patriot and infidel, was born in Dublin to a prosperous Protestant family. His father was a physician. Emmet attended Trinity College in Dublin until he joined the United Irishmen. He fled to France in 1800 after the Irish Rebellion of 1798 was crushed. There, Emmet embraced Deism and met Napoleon and Talleyrand.
For organizing an aborted uprising against the British upon his return to Ireland in 1803, Emmet was condemned to death. Refusing the offer of a cleric’s ministrations on the way to his execution, Emmet told him, “I appreciate your motives, and I thank you for your kindness, but you merely disturb the last moments of a dying man unnecessarily.”
He had been sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, as was customary for conviction of treason. The next day he was hanged and then beheaded in front of St. Catherine’s Church in Dublin at age 25. (D. 1803)
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.“I am an infidel from conviction, and no reasoning can shake my unbelief.”
— Emmet speaking to a minister on the way to the gallows, "History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798" by William Hamilton Maxwell (1845)
Indianapolis Freethinkers (Minutes)
On this date in 1875, the newly reorganized Freethinker Society of Indianapolis, Indiana, met. It had first formed in 1870, when ex-Catholic and German immigrant Clemens Vonnegut Sr., great-grandfather of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., was elected board chairman. From the March 4 minutes: “For this meeting, Mr. Phil. Rappaport will give a lecture about the topic: ‘What do we need?’ and the secretary promised to play music. W. Kothe promised to provide the beer, and C. Koehne explained that he obtained permission from the board of directors of the Turnverein to use the hall for the first meeting of the Freethinkers Society.”
Public domain photo: Clemens Vonnegut Sr., c. 1885
“The corresponding secretary was put in charge: to communicate with the Freethinkers Society in Milwaukee, in order to initiate a closer connection of the existing freethinkers societies.”
— Minutes, Freethinker Society of Indianapolis (March 4, 1875)
Compiled by Bill Dunn
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
