¹ “Irreligion” was an epithet liberally deployed in the era's debates about the truly religious and the seemingly religious, and against Orientalized and racialized groups. But the category can also provisionally index communities committed to a particular taxonomy and rejection of religion in which Christian concepts of authority, revelation, theism, immaterialism, and immortality figured centrally, which is how I use it here. A variety of theists and metaphysicians also identified with American irreligion (so defined) and its nineteenth-century publishing networks, and I include their voices in this study. The “golden age” motif has been popularized most notably by Susan Jacoby. See her Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (New York: Metropolitan, 2004)Google Scholar and Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

² Turner, James, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

³ Warren, Sidney, American Freethought, 1860–1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943)Google Scholar.

⁴ Schmidt, Leigh Eric, Village Atheists: How America's Unbelievers Made their Way in a Godly Nation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016), 116, 125Google Scholar.

⁵ Ibid., esp. 171–209.

⁶ In the absence of compelling metanarratives, “the question,” as Schmidt puts it, is about the “constitutive mutuality” and “fluctuating rivalry” of believers and disbelievers, or, “how the two have interacted, overlapped, coincided, and clashed” (Ibid., 20–21). For the kinds of metanarratives Schmidt is responding to, see especially: on irreligionists’ marginalization, Sehat, David, The Myth of American Religious Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; on irreligionists’ inexorable advance, Jacoby, Freethinkers and Robert Ingersoll; and on the progression of irreligious toleration, Green, Steven K., The Second Disestablishment: Church and State in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)Google Scholar. For the early history of irreligion in America, see Post, Albert, Popular Freethought in America, 1825–1850 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943)Google Scholar and Grasso, Christopher, “Skepticism and American Faith: Infidels, Converts, and Religious Doubt in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the Early Republic 22, no. 3 (Autumn 2002): 465–508 Google Scholar. For an illuminating account that grounds American irreligion in affect and material media, unsettling the primacy of propositional disbelief, see Eric Chalfant, “Practicing Disbelief: Atheist Media in America from the Nineteenth Century to Today” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2016). For the co-construction of religion, infidelity, and politics in early America, see Porterfield, Amanda, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Schlereth, Eric R., An Age of Infidels: The Politics of Religious Controversy in the Early United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)Google Scholar. For Christian imaginings of and anxieties about irreligion, see Marty, Martin E., The Infidel: Freethought and American Religion (Cleveland, Ohio: Meridian, 1961)Google Scholar and Holifield, E. Brooks, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2013), 159–396 Google Scholar.

⁷ Harp, Gillis J., “‘The Church of Humanity’: New York's Worshipping Positivists,” Church History 60, no. 4 (December 1991): 508–523 Google Scholar.

⁸ “A Free-Thinker's Death: No Fear of the Future Harassed Mr. Palmer,” Sun (New York), July 26, 1888, p. 2 Google Scholar.

⁹ “Three Agnostics: How Courtlandt Palmer, Dr. Beard and Matt Carpenter Met Death,” Washington Post, July 29, 1888, p. 6. See also, “He Was Not Afraid to Die: Courtlandt Palmer had no Fear of the Hereafter,” Washington Post, July 27, 1888, p. 2.

¹⁰ Lofton, Kathryn, “Introduction to the Yale Roundtable on Belief,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 24, no. 1 (2012): 54 Google Scholar. See also, Lopez, Donald S. Jr., “Belief,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Taylor, Mark C. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 35 Google Scholar.

¹¹ “The deathbed” and its cognates referred to a spatial setting and, occasionally, a material object, but more often and more importantly they functioned as metonyms for interpretively charged dying.

¹² Most infidel deathbed narratives were produced by Protestants. For most American Catholics, per their historic sacramentality, dying presented fewer perplexities and sincerity did not constitute such a critically important category. But insofar as Catholics inescapably participated in an American Protestant milieu, they occasionally made contributions to the infidel deathbed narrative genre. For the most notorious, see “Death-Bed of Tom Paine, 1809: Extract of a Letter of Bishop Fenwick to His Brother at Georgetown College,” United States Catholic Miscellany and Monthly Review, October 1846, 558–561; A Roman Catholic Canard: A Fabricated Account at the Scene of the Deathbed of Thomas Paine; Did Bishop Fenwick Write It? (New York: Truth Seeker, 1880), 3–4 Google Scholar.

¹³ Studies rarely deal with the social stakes and strategies of Christian constructions of the deathbed as these played out beyond Protestant circles. Stannard, David E., The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Schneider, A. Gregory, “The Ritual of Happy Dying among Early American Methodists,” Church History 56, no. 3 (September 1987): 348–363 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Sparks, Randy J., “The Southern Way of Death: The Meaning of Death in Antebellum White Evangelical Culture,” Southern Quarterly 44, no. 1 (Fall 2006): 32–50 Google Scholar; Lavi, Shai J., The Modern Art of Dying: A History of Euthanasia in the United States (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005), 14–41 Google Scholar. The most notable and substantial exception is Seeman, Erik R., Death in the New World: Cross-Cultural Encounters, 1492–1800 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011)Google Scholar. The most relevant exception is Eric Chalfant's brief discussion of infidel deathbeds. Where Chalfant emphasizes irreligionists’ concerns about deathbed recantation and reconversion vis-à-vis their project of mediated infidel subjectivation, I emphasize irreligionists’ always concomitant concern that any deathbed distress, whether involving recantation and reconversion or not, encouraged interrogations of irreligious sincerity: Chalfant, “Practicing Disbelief,” 75–79.

¹⁴ Marty, The Infidel, esp. 83–84; Schlereth, Age of Infidels, esp. 104, 137–138.

¹⁵ Schmidt, Village Atheists, 22.

¹⁶ Hanley, Mark Y., “The New Infidelity: Northern Protestant Clergymen and the Critique of Progress, 1840–1855,” Religion and American Culture 1, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 203–226 Google Scholar; Porterfield, Conceived in Doubt.

¹⁷ Halttunen, Karen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Fluhman, J. Spencer, “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Charles McCrary, “Fortune Telling and American Religious Freedom,” Religion and American Culture, forthcoming.

¹⁸ My chronology is based on a collation of 600 discretely published deathbed narratives and counter-narratives culled from the following databases and archives: Accessible Archives African American Newspapers; Chronicling America; ProQuest American Periodicals Series Online; ProQuest Historical Newspapers; Readex America's Historical Newspapers; Readex Early American Imprints; Sabin Americana; Hathi Trust Digital Library; Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.; Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.; and the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.

¹⁹ Patristic-era polemics, for example, deployed death narratives of Socrates and Jesus in ways that nineteenth-century Americans would closely parallel. See Wilson, Emily, The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 141–169 Google Scholar; “Death of Socrates and Jesus Christ,” Boston Investigator, May 28, 1845, p. 2; “Death-Bed Religion,” Truth Seeker, July 1874, p. 7.

²⁰ Laqueur, Thomas W., The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015), 187–188 Google Scholar.

²¹ Israel, Jonathan I., Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 295–300 Google Scholar.

²² Schliesser, Eric, “The Obituary of a Vain Philosopher: Adam Smith's Reflections on Hume's Life,” Hume Studies 29, no. 2 (November 2003): 327–362 Google Scholar.

²³ Jean Orieux's account is oft-cited and attentive to the stakes involved in Voltaire's dying, death, and burial: Orieux, Voltaire, trans. Barbara Bray and Helen R. Lane (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1979), 487–490. For more discussion of Voltaire's death, see McManners, J., Reflections at the Death Bed of Voltaire: The Art of Dying in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975)Google Scholar; and Laqueur, The Work of the Dead, 189–203.

²⁴ For example, “Death-Bed of Hume,” Spirit of the Pilgrims, March 1832, p. 172 and (on Voltaire) “An Infidel's Death-Bed,” Boston Recorder, November 5, 1846, p. 180, among numerous others.

²⁵ Laqueur, The Work of the Dead, 339.

²⁶ Cheetham, James, The Life of Thomas Paine: Author of Common Sense, The Crisis, Rights of Man, Etc., Etc., Etc. (New York: Southwick and Pelsue, 1809), 303–308 Google Scholar.

²⁷ “The Last Days of Thomas Paine,” Western Christian Advocate, April 6, 1838, p. 100. The account also purported that Paine wrote a lengthy recantation during his dying days that was subsequently suppressed: “By what hand, or from what motive, must be left to conjecture” (Ibid.). Fellow infidels appeared constantly in Christian narratives, whispering in the ear of the wavering disbeliever, chasing off would-be Christian witnesses, spinning false narratives from the moment of death, and, most importantly, further muddling matters of sincerity. Around erstwhile Protestant deathbeds, they were the embodied successors to the disembodied demons who had surrounded pre-Reformation deathbeds: O'Connor, Mary Catherine, The Art of Dying Well (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), 115–120 Google Scholar; Wicks, Jared, “Applied Theology at the Deathbed: Luther and the Late-Medieval Tradition of the Ars Moriendi,” Gregorianum 79, no. 2 (1998): 345–368 Google Scholar.

²⁸ “Death-Bed of Tom Paine,” Zion's Herald and Wesleyan Journal, March 18, 1857, p. 42.

²⁹ Sault, Richard, The Second Spira: Being a fearful Example of An Atheist Who Had Apostatized from the Christian Religion, and dyed in Despair at Westminster, Decemb. 8. 1692. . . . (London: John Dunton, 1693)Google Scholar. For background on the first Spira, the origins of The Second Spira, and publishing figures for the latter, see Dunton, John, The Life and Errors of John Dunton, Late Citizen of London. . . . (London: S. Malthus, 1707), 154–159 Google Scholar; MacDonald, Michael, “The Fearefull Estate of Francis Spira: Narrative, Identity, and Emotion in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 31, no. 1 (January 1992): 32–61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ Including, Sault, The Second Spira (Boston: Benjamin Harris, 1693)Google Scholar; Sault, The Second Spira (Boston: B. Green, 1693)Google Scholar.

³¹ Including, Sault, Der verzweifelnde Atheist. . . . (Leipzig: Fritsch, 1695)Google Scholar; Sault, The Second Spira. . . . (Boston: T. Fleet & T. Crump, 1715)Google Scholar; Sault, The Second Spira (Newport, R.I.: Solomon Southwick, 1768)Google Scholar; Sault, The Second Spira (Hartford, Conn.: Ebenezer Watson, 1777)Google Scholar.

³² Most Americans after 1805 followed the lead of the Christian Observer in speciously identifying the “Second Spira” as Francis Newport: “The Death-Bed of a Modern Free-Thinker, Exemplified in the Last Hours of the Honourable Francis Newport, Son to the Late Lord Newport,” Christian Observer, November 1805, 645–652.

³³ Examples include, “A Narrative of the Death of the Hon. Fr. N-----t, Son to the late --------,” Methodist Magazine, January 1797, 33–37; “The Death-Bed of a Free-Thinker, Exemplified in the Last Hours of the Honourable Francis Newport, Son to the Late Lord Newport,” Piscataqua Evangelical Magazine, January 1, 1807, p. 28–36; “The Second Spira,” Zion's Herald, January 17, 1827, p. 1; “The Last Hour,” Western Intelligencer, October 11, 1828, p. 1; “Sir Francis Newport,” Reformed Church Messenger, November 4, 1868, p. 6.

³⁴ “Revival Religion in Yale College: Extract of a letter from a gentleman in New-Haven,” The Adviser; or, Vermont Evangelical Magazine, March/April 1815, 135; Three Discourses upon the Religious History of Bowdoin College. . . . (Brunswick: J. Griffin, 1858), 14 Google Scholar.

³⁵ Examples include, David Magie, “Sermon CCXXVII: Carelessness About Religion Unreasonable,” American National Preacher, October 1836, 75; Tucker, Levi, Lectures on the Nature and Dangerous Tendency of Modern Infidelity: Delivered to Young Men, in the First Baptists Church in the City of Cleveland, Ohio (Cleveland, Ohio: Francis B. Penniman, 1837), 177–178 Google Scholar; Samuel T. Spear, “The Retributive Power of Memory,” National Preacher and Village Pulpit, January 1861, 22.

³⁶ Seventh Annual Report of the American Tract Society (New York: American Tract Society, 1832), 55 Google Scholar. For more reports of conversions in which Francis Newport tracts were instrumental, see, for example, “Usefulness of Tracts: Condensed from the Report of the Female Auxiliary of Norwich, Conn.,” Christian Advocate and Journal and Zion's Herald, May 28, 1830, p. 153; “Sixth Annual Report,” American Tract Magazine, June 1831, 79.

³⁷ Examples include, The Contrast; or, the Death-bed of a Free-Thinker, and the Death-bed of a Christian: Exemplified in the Last Hours of the Hon. Francis Newport, and the Rev. Samuel Finley, D.D. (Boston: E. Lincoln, 1806)Google Scholar; Horrors of Infidelity: Some of the Last Words of that Unhappy Young Man Francis Newport (Philadelphia: The Female Religious Tract Society of the Northern Liberties, 1817)Google Scholar; The Death of an Infidel, or, the Last Hours of the Hon. Francis Newport (Philadelphia: Sunday School and Adult School Union, 1821)Google Scholar; The Death Bed of a Modern Free-Thinker: Exemplified in the Last Hours of the Hon. Francis Newport, Son to the Late Lord Newport (New York: Tract Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1828)Google Scholar; Death-bed Terrors of an Infidel. . . . (New York: American Tract Society, 1827)Google Scholar.

³⁸ Gross, Robert A. and Kelley, Mary, eds., A History of the Book in America, vol. 2, An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790–1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010)Google Scholar, 5, 17, 18, 29, 387, 391, 396, 400.

³⁹ Klein, Herbert S., A Population History of the United States, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 99–100 Google Scholar. Christian commentators took note. After surveying the devastation of yellow fever in Philadelphia in 1793, local Lutheran minister Justus Helmuth concluded, “If I had never before been convinced, of the advantages, which the Christian has over the infidel; the instances which I have seen of the dying condition of both, would have been more than sufficient, to produce such a conviction in my mind”: Helmuth, Justus Henry Christian, A Short Account of the Yellow Fever in Philadelphia, For the Reflecting Christian (Philadelphia: Jones, Hoff, and Derrick, 1794), 17 Google Scholar. Likewise, the New Haven Quarterly Christian Spectator featured graphic descriptions of the 1832 cholera epidemic and concluded that “the contrast furnished between the Christian's and the infidel's death-bed at such a period, speaks more than volumes”: “Reminiscences of the Cholera in 1832,” Quarterly Christian Spectator, February 1, 1838, p. 148–155.

⁴⁰ Laderman, Gary, The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799–1883 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Friend, Craig Thompson and Glover, Lorri, eds., Death and the American South (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Bode, Carl, The Anatomy of Popular Culture, 1841–1861 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), 269 Google Scholar; Schantz, Mark S., Awaiting the Heavenly Country: The Civil War and America's Culture of Death (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008), 97–125 Google Scholar; Karl Miller, Sound Investments: Amateur Musicians Make American Pop, forthcoming.  Miller has a chapter focusing on pervasive discussions of death in popular parlor songs published as commercial sheet music between the 1820s and the 1870s.

⁴² Holifield, E. Brooks, “Let the Children Come: The Religion of the Protestant Child in Early America,” Church History 76, no. 4 (December 2007): 750–777 Google Scholar.

⁴³ From Smith, Joseph: “There is a thought more dreadful than that of total annihilation That is the thought that we shall never again meet with those we loved here on earth” (Ehat, Andrew and Cook, Lyndon, ed., The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph Smith [Provo, Utah: Grandin, 1991], 240)Google Scholar; and “Let me be resurrected with the Saints, whether to heaven or hell or any other good place. . . . What do we care if the society is good” (Faulring, Scott, ed., An American Prophet's Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith, Jr. [Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1989], 398–399)Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ “Died,” Macon Telegraph, July 21, 1828, p. 115.

⁴⁵ Davies, Douglas, The Mormon Culture of Salvation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000)Google Scholar; Brown, Samuel Morris, In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Braude, Ann, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 32–56 Google Scholar; Gutierrez, Cathy, “Dead Reckonings: Spirits and Corpses at the Crossroads,” in Gutierrez, ed., Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 48–65 Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Faust, Drew Gilpin, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Vintage, 2008), esp. 1–31Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ “Reflections on the instability of the Infidel's confidence at the approach of death,” Rural Magazine; or, Vermont Repository, August 1796, 398–402.

⁴⁸ “On the Death of David Hume,” General Assembly's Missionary Magazine, January 1806, 32–34.

⁴⁹ See Ginzberg, Lori D., “‘The Hearts of Your Readers Will Shudder’: Fanny Wright, Infidelity, and American Freethought,” American Quarterly 46, no. 2 (June 1994): 195–226 Google Scholar; Gordon, Sarah Barringer, “Blasphemy and the Law of Religious Liberty in Nineteenth-Century America,” American Quarterly 52, no. 4 (December 2000): 682–719 Google Scholar; Marty, The Infidel, 33–58, 88–115.

⁵⁰ “The Dying Infidel's Need of the Consolations of Religion,” Episcopal Watchman, October 19, 1833, p. 94.

⁵¹ “The Contrast—A Sketch: The Infidel's Death-Bed,” Southern Literary Messenger, August 1839, 529–532.

⁵² “Admonitions from the Death-Bed: Number VI,” Connecticut Evangelical Magazine, April 1802, 383–389.

⁵³ “The Infidel's Death-Bed,” New York Observer and Chronicle, May 21, 1842, p. 1.

⁵⁴ “Dying Confession of an Infidel,” Christian Watchman, November 24, 1841, p. 1.

⁵⁵ Gordon, “Blasphemy and the Law of Religious Liberty.”

⁵⁶ Hardy, Grant, ed., The Book of Mormon: A Reader's Edition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 334–339 Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Maffly-Kipp, Laurie F., “Tracking the Sincere Believer: Authentic Religion and the Enduring Legacy of Joseph Smith,” in Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals after Two Centuries, ed. Givens, Terryl L. and Neilsen, Reid L. (New York: Oxford University Press), 175–201 Google Scholar; Trilling, Lionel, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Fluhman, “A Peculiar People.”

⁵⁹ “Sermon by Prof. Finney: Reported by the Editor,” Oberlin Evangelist, November 5, 1845, p. 179.

⁶⁰ “The Shadow of Death,” New York Evangelist, January 1, 1857, p. 6.

⁶¹ Holifield, Theology in America, esp. 173–196.

⁶² Rivett, Sarah, “Tokenography: Narration and the Science of Dying in Puritan Deathbed Testimonies,” Early American Literature 42, no. 3 (2007): 471–494Google Scholar.

⁶³ Nineteenth-century Christians were not shy about this. A mid-century poem titled “An Unbeliever's Death-bed” ended with typical evidential effusion and revelatory raptures:

⁶⁴ Clark, David W., Death-Bed Scenes; or, Dying With and Without Religion: Designed to Illustrate the Truth and Power of Christianity (New York: Carlton & Porter, 1851)Google Scholar. See, for example, Clark, David W., Death-Bed Scenes, or, The Contrast: And Other Stories (Boston: Sabbath School Society, 1858)Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Baker, Osmon C., The Last Witness; or, The Dying Sayings of Eminent Christians and Noted Infidels (New York: Carlton & Porter, 1853)Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Clark, Dying With and Without Religion, 15–16, 21–22. Reviewers enthusiastically received the compilation as a cache of Christian evidences. For a collection of reviews of the first edition, ranging from Boston to Cincinnati to Columbia, see “Death-Bed Scenes,” Christian Advocate and Journal, December 18, 1851, p. 204.

⁶⁷ One example among many: a narrative describing a young “professed infidel” who struggled to “hide his fears and appear calm and collected in the conflict with death.” It was originally printed in the North American and Daily Advertiser as a letter from an anonymous Sunday school teacher: “The Infidel on His Death Bed,” North American and Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), August 21, 1841, p. 1 Google Scholar. It was then circulated by the following: Wabash Courier (Terre-Haute, Ind.), October 23, 1841, p. 1 Google Scholar; South Carolina Temperance Advocate and Register of Agriculture and General Literature (Columbia), October 28, 1841, p. 1 Google Scholar; Farmer's Cabinet (Amherst, N.H.), August 1, 1844, p. 1 Google Scholar; Christian Secretary (Harford, Conn.; Baptist), August 2, 1844, p. 4 Google Scholar; New York Evangelist (Presbyterian), August 22, 1844 and September 17, 1846, p. 1 Google Scholar; Episcopal Recorder (Philadelphia; Reformed Episcopal), September 7, 1844, p. 97 Google Scholar; Zion's Herald and Wesleyan Journal (Boston; Methodist), September 18, 1844 and January 20, 1847, p. 1 Google Scholar; The Youth's Companion (Boston), October 1, 1846, p. 87 Google Scholar; Christian Watchman (Boston; Baptist), October 2, 1846, p. 1.

⁶⁸ Casper, Scott E., Groves, Jeffrey D., Nissenbaum, Stephen W., and Winship, Michael, eds., A History of the Book in America, vol. 3, The Industrial Book, 1840–1880 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 195–196 Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Richards, Caroline Cowles, Village Life in America, 1852–1872, Including the Period of the American Civil War, as Told in the Diary of a School-Girl (New York: Henry Holt, 1913), 225 Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ See, for examples, “Reflections on Death-Bed Scenes,” Virginia Evangelical and Literary Magazine, March 1818, 108–115; “True and False Repose in Death,” Washington Theological Repertory, May 1828, 193; “Death-Bed Scenes,” Spirit of the Pilgrims, December 1830, 623–629; “Death-Bed Testimony,” Evangelical Magazine and Gospel Advocate, February 14, 1845, p. 55.

⁷¹ See, for examples, “On the Authenticity of the Account of the Death-bed of a Modern Freethinker,” Christian Observer, November 1811, 696–697; “The Narrative of ‘The Second Spira, or the Death-Bed of a Modern Freethinker,’ An Imposition,” Christian Advocate, May 1, 1828, p. 211.

⁷² “To the Editor of the Correspondent: Thomas Paine,” The Correspondent, January 20, 1827, p. 6.

⁷³ “A Lecture, Delivered at the Free Press Association, On Death—By a Member,” The Correspondent, November 1, 1828, p. 250.

⁷⁴ “Death-Bed Declarations Suspicious,” Boston Investigator, October 20, 1841, p. 3.

⁷⁵ “Liberal Sunday Lectures, 339 Washington Street,” Boston Investigator, September 23, 1846, p. 3.

⁷⁶ “Death-Bed Experiences,” Boston Investigator, April 21, 1847, p. 2.

⁷⁷ “Of No Consequence,” Boston Investigator, September 16, 1868, p. 157.

⁷⁸ “Voltaire,” Boston Investigator, January 8, 1873, p. 4.

⁷⁹ For example: “A Dying Hour,” Boston Investigator, December 25, 1839, p. 2; “A Death Bed,” Boston Investigator, July 20, 1842, p. 2; “A Death-Bed,” Boston Investigator, April 9, 1856, p. 2.

⁸⁰ “Death-Bed of Voltaire,” Boston Investigator, December 17, 1856, p. 2.

⁸¹ “Death-Bed Repentance of Liberals,” The Correspondent, April 25, 1829, p. 213–215.

⁸² “An Old Subject,” Boston Investigator, July 18, 1860, p. 100.

⁸³ “Recantations,” Western Examiner, July 2, 1835, p. 199–200; “Original Communications,” Boston Investigator, April 25, 1860, p. 1; L. K. Washburn, “A Pulpit Torquemada,” Truth Seeker, April 25, 1896, p. 263.

⁸⁴ Brown, Candy Gunther, The Word in the World: Evangelical Writing, Publishing, and Reading in America, 1789–1880 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004)Google Scholar, esp. 9–12, 46; Casper, et al., A History of the Book in America, vol. 3, esp. 271.

⁸⁵ “Died,” Free Enquirer, March 29, 1835, p. 99.

⁸⁶ “Obituary,” Western Examiner, April 9, 1835, p. 103.

⁸⁷ “Obituary Notice,” Boston Investigator, May 26, 1837, p. 1.

⁸⁸ “Obituary,” Boston Investigator, February 17, 1841, p. 3.

⁸⁹ “Death-Bed of William C. Bell,” Boston Investigator, July 16, 1845, p. 3.

⁹⁰ Irreligionists also took individual initiative to secure their deaths from Christian narration. Writing ostensibly first-person accounts directly from the deathbed became something of a common practice in the post-Civil War era. Jeremiah Hacker of Berlin, New Jersey, for example, described his imminent death and then mused: “I may linger along some weeks . . . or may go suddenly. . . . I have no . . . fear of death. . . . If I pass away before you hear from me again, do not believe any stories that may be told by pious liars about my recantation or death bed repentance” (Letter to the editor, Truth Seeker, April 14, 1888, p. 234). See also, for example, “Obituary,” Truth Seeker, October 10, 1903, p. 650.

⁹¹ Vanguard (Dayton, Ohio), quoted in “A Trick of Priestcraft,” Boston Investigator, October 14, 1857, p. 1.

⁹² “Died,” Boston Investigator, October 21, 1857, p. 3.

⁹³ “Obituary,” Truth Seeker, April 12, 1884, p. 238.

⁹⁴ “Elijah Clark,” Boston Investigator, July 14, 1894, p. 6.

⁹⁵ “One More Good Man Sleeps,” Truth Seeker, November 28, 1885, p. 766.

⁹⁶ Cleveland World, May 15, 1899, quoted in “A Friend of Freethought Passes Away,” Truth Seeker, June 10, 1899, p. 357.

⁹⁷ “Obituary,” Boston Investigator, June 17, 1840, p. 2.

⁹⁸ See “Stephen,” in Adams, Nehemiah, Christ a Friend: Thirteen Discourses (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1854), 262–290 Google Scholar. The published sermon went through five editions between 1854 and 1864.

⁹⁹ Ibid., 271.

¹⁰⁰ “Death-Bed of David Hume,” Boston Investigator, February 23, 1859, p. 2.

¹⁰¹ “Col. R. G. Ingersoll's Challenge,” Truth Seeker, September 1, 1877, p. 280.

¹⁰² The Observer had frequently (and recently) published accounts of Voltaire and Paine in particular dying agonizing fearful deaths, and occasionally recanting. For example, Rev. Wm. Hall, “Death-Bed of Tom Paine,” New York Observer, February 18, 1875, p. 1.

¹⁰³ “Put Down the Money,” New York Observer, July 19, 1877, p. 1.

¹⁰⁴ “Col. Ingersoll and the ‘Observer,’” Truth Seeker, September 22, 1877, p. 301.

¹⁰⁵ “Tom Paine's Life and Death,” New York Observer, September 27, 1877, p. 1.

¹⁰⁶ “Paine Vindicated,” Truth Seeker, October 20, 1877, p. 331–332.

¹⁰⁷ See, for examples, True Northerner (Paw Paw, Mich.), October 5, 1877, p. 6; Helena Herald (Mont.), October 18, 1877, p. 1; Bismarck Tri-Weekly Tribune (N. Dak.), October 22, 1877, p. 1; Wheeling Daily Intelligencer (W. Va.), October 27, 1877, p. 2.

¹⁰⁸ “The Observer and Tom Paine,” Zion's Herald, October 25, 1877, p. 343.

¹⁰⁹ Independent (New York), September 20, 1877, p. 17.

¹¹⁰ “Tom Paine Again,” New York Observer, November 1, 1877, p. 1.

¹¹¹ “Tom Paine's Defense,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 12, 1877, p. 5.

¹¹² Ingersoll published the entire exchange in a popular pamphlet: Ingersoll, Robert G., A Vindication of Thomas Paine: A Reply to the New York Observer (Peoria, Ill.: Saturday Evening Call, 1877)Google Scholar.

¹¹³ “The Prelude: Probation at Death,” The Independent, February 22, 1883, pp. 6, 5–7.

¹¹⁴ “Higher! Higher!” The Independent, February 22, 1883, p. 16.

¹¹⁵ “The Death of Dr. George M. Beard,” The Independent, April 26, 1883, p. 4–5.

¹¹⁶ “A Death-Bed Conversion Discredited,” The Independent, April 26, 1883, p. 17.

¹¹⁷ “Eating the Crow Boiled by Joe Cook,” Truth Seeker, May 5, 1883, p. 280.

¹¹⁸ “The Death-Bed of a Positivist,” New York Times, June 19, 1881, p. 6.

¹¹⁹ “Three Agnostics,” Washington Post, July 29, 1888, p. 6. See also: “How an Infidel Died: A Scene at the Deathbed of Courtlandt Palmer,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 26, 1888, p. 3; “Mr. Palmer's Last Hours: He Showed That One Freethinker Did Not Fear Death,” New York Times, July 26, 1888, p. 8.

¹²⁰ “Death of an Infidel: Last Words of Joseph Coveney of Michigan Were ‘Die As I Lived,’” New York Times, February 13, 1897, p. 7.

¹²¹ Foote, G. W., Infidel Death-Beds: ‘Idle Tales of Dying Horrors,’ 2nd ed. (New York: Truth Seeker, 1892)Google Scholar, 6, 9.

¹²² “In Memorium,” Truth Seeker, March 10, 1894, p. 155.

¹²³ “A Funeral,” Boston Investigator, February 26, 1879, p. 5.

¹²⁴ “The Apostle of Liberty,” Boston Investigator, February 6, 1884, p. 2.

¹²⁵ John W. Abbott, letter to the editor, Truth Seeker, April 6, 1889, p. 219.

¹²⁶ “Various Voices,” Lucifer the Light Bearer, July 8, 1899, p. 207.

¹²⁷ John E. Remsburg, “Did Thomas Paine Recant?,” Truth Seeker, February 24, 1906, p. 119.

¹²⁸ P. F. Garrett, letter to the editor, Truth Seeker, August 17, 1889, p. 523.

¹²⁹ Schmidt, Village Atheists.

¹³⁰ “The Death-Beds of a Christian and an Infidel Contrasted: In Two Letters; A Story Founded on Facts,” Boston Investigator, April 26, 1876, p. 3.

¹³¹ Ellis, William T., “Billy” Sunday: The Man and His Message (Philadelphia: L. T. Myers, 1914), 379 Google Scholar. Sunday preached this message often. See, for example, “‘Billy’ Sunday's Sermon Today,” Evening Ledger (Philadelphia), March 3, 1915, p. 7.

¹³² Phelps, Austin, English Style in Public Discourse with Special Reference to the Usage of the Pulpit (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1883), 190 Google Scholar.

¹³³ “Death of a Texas Infidel: Ante-Mortem Statement of C. B. Moore Read at His Grave—Epitaph Composed by Himself,” Dallas Morning News, November 29, 1901, p. 8.

¹³⁴ “Falsehoods about Infidels,” Boston Investigator, January 18, 1893, p. 2; “Mr. Reid and His Prayers,” Truth Seeker, March 11, 1899, p. 154; “Blade Mail Bag,” Blue-Grass Blade (Lexington, Ky.), January 30, 1910, p. 3.

¹³⁵ See, for example, “Cruffot to Talmage: Pulpit Story of a Revolutionary Hero in Controversy; A Retraction Twice Requested,” Washington Post, April 12, 1896, p. 9.

¹³⁶ “Lies That Live: Many Are Current Today Though Their Falsity Has Been Proved Over and Over,” Los Angeles Times, July 11, 1915, p. 16.

¹³⁷ What course the infidel deathbed took in the latter half of the twentieth century and the twenty-first century is beyond the research purview of this article, but in December 2011, Christopher Hitchens died a slow, thoughtful, and extremely public death that suggests some striking twenty-first-century continuities and contrasts. In letters, books, articles, and interviews, Hitchens discussed the possibility that Christians would claim him as a deathbed convert or covert believer. Echoing many nineteenth-century deathbed naturalizers, he assured Americans that if he did convert, it meant the cancer had gotten to his brain. And replicating the irreligious discourse surrounding the deaths of famous nineteenth-century irreligionists, scores of commentators assured Americans that there would be, and that there had been, no revelation of surreptitious belief, let alone a reconciliation with the not-great God. But in crucial contrast to his late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century counterparts, Hitchens's actual deathbed involved no explicit declarations or disclaimers. “To be honest,” his wife reported, “the subject of God didn't come up.” Neither did Hitchens feel the need to demonstrate fearlessness, peace, or pleasure in the face of death. Most tellingly, unlike in nineteenth-century Christian Americana, actual deathbed narratives interrogating the sincerity of Hitchens's disbelief are extremely difficult to find. Most Christian leaders, like Albert Mohler, affirmed and bemoaned the “excruciating” bona fides of Hitchens's disbelief. And most Christian laity hoped and prayed for a revelation of belief, rather than narrating it. Even the boldest speculations about the possible doubts of “the world's most notorious atheist,” now enter the public sphere with chastened disavowals of the Christian history of infidel deathbed narration. Thus, irreligious discourse surrounding Hitchens's deathbed looks a lot like a ventriloquist act. If, as I argue, the truly robust Christian tradition of infidel deathbed narration died by the first decade of the twentieth century, irreligionists ventriloquize it today to remind us of that embarrassing skeleton in American Christians’ closet. Adrian Humphreys, “No Death-Bed Conversion for Atheist Christopher Hitchens,” National Post, September 8, 2012, http://news.nationalpost.com/news/christopher-hitchens-writes-dispatches-from-cancerland-in-posthumous-memoir-mortality; Albert Mohler, Twitter post, December 15, 2011, 9:12 p.m., http://twitter.com/albertmohler; David Friend, “Today is ‘Everybody Pray for Hitchens Day,’” Vanity Fair, September 20, 2010, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/09/today-is-everybody-pray-for-hitchens-day; Taunton, Larry Alex, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World's Most Notorious Atheist (Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson Books, 2016), 171 Google Scholar.

¹³⁸ Aries, Philippe, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Weaver, Helen (New York: Knopf, 1981)Google Scholar; Farrell, James J., Inventing the American Way of Death, 1830–1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

¹³⁹ Mislin, David, Saving Faith: Making Religious Pluralism an American Value at the Dawn of the Secular Age (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2015)Google Scholar; Laqueur, The Work of the Dead.