its glorious career." At the first election of officers, General Rawlins was chosen President and General Logan the First Vice-President, and he has always manifested a great interest in its annual meetings. General Logan was also the first Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization which has since placed on its rolls a large majority of the surviving volunteer soldiery of the United States, bound by the triple bond of Union-"Fraternity, Charity, and Loyalty."

CHAPTER XI.

THE LEGISLATOR-THE MANAGER OF IMPEACH

A

MENT.

T the second session of the Fortieth Congress, General Logan was reappointed

chairman of a joint Committee on Ordnance, which, as he remarked, had been sitting with open doors, and had disclosed the existence. of great frauds perpetrated on the Government in contracts. He also asserted "that more of our own men were killed in the late war by our own ammunition, fired from our own light and heavy field-pieces, than were killed by the heavy and light artillery of the enemy. Guns are made to-day for the use of the army and navy that are the invention of some men directly connected with one or the other of these departments. Indeed, no other men can have an opportunity of getting such

contracts."

A bill having been introduced for the employment of additional clerks for the settlement of bounty claims, General Logan offered a substitute providing that preference should be given to soldiers and sailors who had served faithfully. His reason for urging this, as he frankly gave it,

was, "I know that if soldiers and sailors are employed as clerks they will feel more interest in performing that duty for the benefit of their former comrades who have been with them in arms, than will others who have not the same sympathy with or feeling for them that they have with and for each other."

In

One of the Illinois Democrats having extended a few remarks into a long and labored attack upon the Republican party, before putting it in print General Logan called him to account. attempting to defend himself, the member cast some personal reflections on General Logan, who promptly replied: "In regard to what my colleague has said about his being a gentleman I have nothing to say. I do not desire to reply to insinuations made in such bitterness and coming from the lips of a gentleman so highly cultivated that he can insinuate here that I am an illiterate man. I desire not to say anything to affect the honesty, the moral integrity, or the personal standing of any gentleman who stands so high that he can cast an insinuation of that kind upon a colleague in this House. True it is, I was not educated in any of the higher colleges, nor was my colleague. I was educated, however, in a town that had church steeples. Whether my colleague can say as much is for him to answer. I do not claim that I am one of the highly educated gentlemen of this House; I claim no such thing.

But I will say to my colleague that he, with his own knowledge of his own abilities and erudition, should be the last man to insinuate anything against the education or abilities of any man on this floor."

In the reduction of the army, General Logan claimed that a fair share of the officers appointed from the volunteers should be retained. "Sir," said he, "four years of experience in the field is worth four years of experience within the walls of West Point. I insist that those civilians who have served in the army shall have the same rights and privileges under our legislation as these West Point men, who have been protected, fostered, and sustained by every law Congress has passed in regard to this subject. The people of the country do not understand that an officer of the army has an inalienable right to hold on to his commission as long as life lasts-with more tenacity, apparently, sometimes, than ordinary men adhere to it."

General Logan was chosen by the House of Representatives one of the Managers to impeach President Andrew Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors and to conduct his trial. His arguments during the trial displayed legal research and a thorough acquaintance with the constitutional powers and prerogatives of the President of the United States. He reviewed the evidence sustaining the charges in the articles of impeachment, and demonstrated that the President had

been false to the people who had taken him from obscurity and conferred on him high distinction," false to the memory of him whose death made him President, false to the principles of our contest for national life, false to the Constitution and laws of the land, and false to his oath of office. In concluding his eloquent arraignment he said that he was "overwhelmed with emotion. Memory is busy with the scenes of the years which have intervened between March 4th, 1861, and this day. Our great war, its battles, and ten thousand incidents, without mental bidding and beyond control, almost pass in panoramic view before me. As in the presence of those whom I have seen fall in battle as we rushed to victory, or die of wounds or disease in hospital far from home and the loved ones, to be seen no more until the grave gives up its dead, have I endeavored to discharge my humble part in this great trial."

General Logan was also actively engaged at this session in the discussion of the appropriation bills, of the funding bills, of the tax bill, of the bill granting pensions to the soldiers of 1812, of the bill for the purchase of Alaska, and of other important public measures. Once he spoke at length on the principles of the Democratic party, asserting that the Democratic platform is a "whited sepulchre, full of dead men's bones;" and saying: "It is a monument which is intended to hide decay and conceal corruption. Like many