On Monday my
daughter, Kristen, an honest-to-goodness member of the Daughters of the
American Revolution, went down to Grant Park to join in the re-dedication of
the General John A. Logan Monument, located at Ninth Street and Michigan
Avenue.
She was happy that
she went.
 |
| The ceremony on May 28 (KJB, 2012) |
Hosted by The
Lawrence Pucci Wedgwood Society of Chicago and the Chicago Cultural Mile
Association, the Memorial Day ceremony, as Kristen explained to me, was an
appropriate tribute to those whose sacrifices served to give us the country we
enjoy today and to General Logan, himself.
General John A.
Logan was born in southern Illinois in 1826, the son of a Scot-Irish immigrant who moved to Jackson County in 1824. At the age of 23, the young man volunteered
for the Mexican War and upon his return served as the Prosecuting Attorney of
the Third Judiciary District. By 1852
Logan was elected the Illinois House of Representatives, and six years later he
was elected to the United States House of Representatives.
When the Civil War
began Representative Logan was in his second House term, but he volunteered to serve and
in August of 1861 he began to assemble the Thirty-Firsst Illinois Volunteer
Infantry. In the unit's first major battle, the
siege of Fort Donnlson, Logan was shot through the left shoulder, had the wound
bandaged, returned to the field, where he was then shot through the right
thigh.
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| Remarks by Ms. Katy Hall, representing the Daughters of the American Revolution (KJB, 2012) |
In the battle Logan’s
regiment lost 303 of its 606 men, but the victory at Fort Donnelson, secured in
large part by the efforts of Logan and the Thirty-First, was the first major Union
victory in the war. General Ulysses S.
Grant awarded Logan a battlefield promotion to Brigadier General.
Logan went on to
fight at Vicksburg where he was promoted to Major General. At the Battle of Atlanta, after General
McPherson was killed, Logan took command of the Army of the Tennessee. Riding through his scattered soldiers, he urged his troops to reform their lines as he raised the flag and
shouted, “McPherson and revenge boys!” The troops rallied, and Atlanta was
captured. [www.loganmuseum.org]
After the war,
Logan returned to the U. S. House of Representatives as a Republican. As the Commander of the Grand Army of the
Republic (with a membership at its height of over 400,000 Civil War veterans),
General Logan issued General Order No. 11 in 1868, which established Decoration
Day, the origin of our present-day Memorial Day.
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| Re-Dedication of the Logan Statue on Memorial Day (KJB, 2012) |
Logan is one of
only three people named in the Illinois state song, the other two being Grant
and Abraham Lincoln. In addition to the
equestrian statue in Grant Park, Logan Square on the northwest side of Chicago
and Logan Boulevard are named after him. (See Connecting the Windy City blogposts on February 5, 2011 and February
11, 2011—Illinois Centennial Monument at
Logan Square—Parts I and II)
More on the statue
of General Logan in Grant Park coming right up . . .
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