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Senate Years of Service: 1871-1877; 1879-1886 Party: Republican; Republican
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.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography;
Dictionary of American Biography; Jones, James P.
John A. Logan: Stalwart Republican From Illinois. Tallahassee:
University of Florida Press, 1982; U.S. Congress.
Memorial Addresses. 49th Cong., 2d sess., 1886-1887.
Washington: Government Printing Office, 1887.
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