Courtesy U.S. Senate Historical Office

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.