CHAPTER III.

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS WASHINGTON.

N the fall of 1858, when the famous contest between Lincoln and Douglas politically con

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vulsed the State, Mr. Logan was elected a Representative in Congress from the Ninth Congressional District of Illinois. A large number of the old-line Whigs voted for him, and he received 15,878 votes against 2,796 votes for D. L. Phillips, the Republican candidate, and 144 votes scattering. Mrs. Logan, who had taken a deep interest in his campaign, accompanied her husband to Washington, where they lived in the modest way from which they have never departed. In the long contest for Speaker, at the commencement of the session, he came prominently to the front as the defender of Stephen A. Douglas against personal attacks, and when questioned concerning his political views, he said: "I will answer the gentleman's question. I am now about twenty-eight years of age. I was born a Democrat; and all my life I have learned to believe that the Democratic party, in national convention, never does wrong. I have buried past issues. I have done with them. Ignoring them,

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say that I am a Democrat without a prefix to my name. I am for Stephen A. Douglas for the next President of the United States-first, last, and all the time. If he is not nominated, I am for the next man-that is, sir, the man who is nominated." He was in favor of supporting the Constitution and of carrying out its guarantees, "as," to use his own words-" every man will do who is a patriot, a good citizen, a law-abiding and a Constitution-loving man.”

Mr. Pennington (who had been substituted by the Republicans for Mr. John Sherman) was elected Speaker on the forty-fourth ballot, and after two months of earnest struggle. Mr. Logan voted for the Democratic candidate, except on the thirty-ninth ballot, when he voted for Mr. Smith, of North Carolina. In giving his reasons for this vote, he said: "I do not make any remarks for the purpose of justifying myself before my constituents, because I do not believe they would call in question any vote that I may give here in accordance with the will of the large majority of the Democratic party of this House. I represent upon this floor, perhaps, as large a constituency as any man here. I came here with a Democratic majority of about fourteen thousand votes over a Republican opposition. I have never in my life given any other than a DemoIn the district I have the honor to represent there is an element now assisting the

cratic vote.

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Democratic party in sustaining the Union and the Constitution-I allude to the old-line Whigs."

Mr. Logan was appointed Chairman of the Committee on "Revised and Unfinished Business," which was the only committee entirely composed of Democrats. He soon displayed his executive ability and industrious habits. He was always present at the sessions of the House, and the business of his constituents at the Department was always promptly attended to, thus increasing his hold upon their esteem. Old party lines were being broken up, but Mr. Logan adhered with unbroken tenacity to the doctrines of Jefferson and Jackson, as then interpreted by the Democratic party. When a bill was reported from the Committee on the Judiciary to punish and prevent the practice of polygamy in Utah, Mr. Logan offered as a substitute a bill repealing the act creating that Territory and establishing in its stead the Territories of Jeffersonia and Nevada. Many thought then and think now that this would have broken up effectually the sway of polygamy.

Amid the greatest political excitement, Mr. Logan was ever attentive to the wants of his constituents. He secured the passage of a bill for the holding of Circuit and District Courts of the United States for the Southern District of Illinois, in the city of Cairo, thus avoiding the necessity for jurors, lawyers, litigants, and witnesses there

abouts to journey some two hundred miles to Springfield. He also sought a confirmation to the titles of some eighteen hundred acres of saline lands which individuals had purchased of the State in good faith, but the record of the sale of which had been destroyed, and he urged the passage of other acts calculated to benefit the State of Illinois.

When evening sessions were asked for he said that if they were simply for the purpose of allowing gentlemen to read written speeches, he had no objections, but he desired to take the floor when the report of the Peace Committee was discussed. He had no written speech-he never wrote one-he did not want to speak at night to empty benches and he hoped the House would not force him to. When he obtained the floor he spoke earnestly for an hour on the state of the Union, as seen from his Democratic standpoint, and deprecated war, discussing the best way in which to "restore tranquillity and to bring the American people once more together in the bonds of amity and peace." He wanted to have the people of the South, who had been dragged into the whirlpool of disunion by reckless and ambitious men, return on bended knees, exclaiming: "I come once more to the parental roof for protection," and he said: "I have been taught to believe that the preservation of this glorious Union, with its broad flag waving over us as the shield for

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our protection on land and on sea, is paramount to all the parties and platforms that ever have existed or ever can exist. I would to-day, if I had the power, sink my own party and every other one, with all their platforms, into the vortex of ruin, without heaving a sigh or shedding a tear, to save the Union or even stop the revolution where it is." In conclusion, Mr. Logan said: "Sir, what shall I say to my gallant constituents when I return to them? Shall I bear the ill tidings that nothing has been done in Congress to give them a ray of hope for the future of our country? Must I tell those gallant Tennesseeans, Kentuckians, and men from different Southern States, that ere long, if they should desire to visit the soil of their nativity, they must be prepared to visit a foreign and perhaps a hostile government? Shall I say to the sons of gallant old Virginia, the mother of our own State, that it is highly probable that very soon, if they want to visit the soil where their fathers and mothers, the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the one who drafted the Constitution, and the one who, with our poor and half-starved armies, drove the British from our land, signed the Constitution, and was our first President, all lie buried-that they will at some future day have the opportunity, with a passport in their pockets, or, in certain events, they can do so with a torch in one hand and a sword in the other? No, no! Let me not bear this sad