LOGAN, John Alexander, a Representative and a Senator from Illinois; born in Murphysboro, Jackson County, Ill., on February 9, 1826; attended the common schools and studied law; served in the war with Mexico as a lieutenant; returned to Illinois; clerk of the Jackson County Court 1849; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1852, and practiced; member, Illinois house of representatives 1852-1853, 1856-1857; prosecuting attorney for the third judicial district of Illinois 1853-1857; presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1856; elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congresses and served from March 4, 1859, until April 2, 1862, when he resigned and entered the Union Army; chairman, Committee on Revisal and Unfinished Business (Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congresses); during the Civil War was commissioned brigadier general, and then major general of Volunteers, and served until 1865; elected as a Republican to the Fortieth, Forty-first, and Forty-second Congresses and served from March 4, 1867, until his resignation on March 3, 1871, at the end of the Forty-first Congress, having been elected Senator; chairman, Committee on Military Affairs (Forty-first Congress); one of the managers appointed by the House of Representatives in 1868 to conduct the impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson; conceived of the idea of Memorial Day and inaugurated the observance in May 1868; elected to the United States Senate as a Republican and served from March 4, 1871, to March 3, 1877; unsuccessful candidate for reelection; chairman, Committee on Military Affairs (Forty-third and Forty-fourth Congresses); resumed the practice of law in Chicago; again elected to the United States Senate in 1879; reelected in 1885, and served from March 4, 1879, until his death; chairman, Committee on Military Affairs (Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth Congresses); unsuccessful Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States in 1884; died in Washington, D.C., December 26, 1886; lay in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, December 30-31, 1886; interment in a tomb in the National Cemetery, Soldiers' Home, Washington, D.C.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
[ Top ]Dawson, George Francis. Life and Services of General John A. Logan, as Soldier and Statesman. Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1887.
Ecelbarger, Gary. Black Jack Logan: An Extraordinary Life in Peace and War. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2005.
Eidson, William Gene. "John Alexander Logan: Hero of the Volunteers." Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1967.
Fleming, George J. "The Mind of a Stalwart: John A. Logan." Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences Proceedings, 3d ser. 10 (October 17, 1975): 97-101.
Jones, James P. Black Jack: John A. Logan and Southern Illinois in the Civil War Era. Tallahassee: Florida State University, 1967.
___. "John A. Logan and the Election of 1864 in Illinois." Mid-America 42 (October 1960): 219-30.
___. "John A. Logan, Freshman in Congress, 1859-1861." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 56 (Spring 1963): 36-60.
___. John A. Logan, Stalwart Republican from Illinois. Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida, 1982.
___. "Radical Reinforcement: John A. Logan Returns to Congress." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 68 (September 1975): 324-36.
Kent, Gary Wayne. "Evolution of Change: The Ideological Migration of John A. Logan During the Civil War Era, as Evidenced in his Public Speaking." Ph.D. dissertation, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1989.
Logan, John Alexander. The Great Conspiracy. 1885. Reprint. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971.
___. The Volunteer Soldier of America. 1877. Reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1979.
Logan, Mrs. John A. Reminiscences of the Civil War and Reconstruction. 1913. Abridged ed., edited by George Worthington Adams. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970. Originally published as Reminiscences of a Soldier's Wife.
Messamore, Ford. "John A. Logan: Democrat and Republican." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1940.
U.S. Congress. Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of John Alexander Logan (a Senator from Illinois.) 49th Cong., 2d sess., 1886-1887. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1887.
