"This courageous and dutiful little girl relieved her mother, who was not strong, of most of the household work, and still found time to attend the primitive school of the neighborhood and train herself in useful needlework.

"The father felt a just pride in his eldest daughter. The assistance which she had rendered her mother during his long absence in Mexico and California had even more closely endeared her to his heart, and her love of study had prompted him to give part of his income to her proper education. Accordingly, in 1853 the daughter was sent to the Convent of St. Vincent, near Morganfield, Ky., a branch of the Nazareth Institute, the oldest institution of the kind in the country. This was the nearest educational establishment of sufficient advancement in the higher branches of knowledge. The young lady was reared a Baptist; after her marriage she joined the Methodist Church, the Church of the Logan family."

Having graduated in 1855, Miss Cunningham returned to her father's home at Shawneetown. In her younger days, when a mere child, she had aided her father as Sheriff of the County, Clerk of the Court, and Register of the Land Office in preparing his papers. Those were not the days of blank forms for legal documents. Accordingly the father depended upon the daughter to make copies for him. While Mary Cunningham was thus aiding her father in his official duties John Logan was Prosecuting Attorney of the district. He had known Father Cunningham and was his warm friend. He had known the daughter as a little girl. In 1855 they were married and at once went to the young attorney's home at Benton, Franklin County.

The young wife immediately installed herself in the place of companion and helpmeet to her husband. She accompanied him on all his professional journeys, an undertaking in those days of wildernesses and no roads, often requiring

great endurance and privation. In 1856 the devoted wife saw her husband triumphantly elected a member of the Legislature, and in the famous Douglas and Lincoln Senatorial contest he was elected as a Douglas Democrat to Congress. In all these hard-fought political campaigns the noble wife went with her husband, assisting in much of his work of correspondence and copying, and frequently receiv ing his friends and conferring with them on the details of the campaign. When Mr. Logan came to Congress as a Representative Mrs. Logan came with him. She remained with him in Washington until the outbreak of the rebellion, when he resigned his seat in Congress to return to Illinois to go into the service of his country.

The war having commenced and Mr. Logan having raised and been assigned to the command of the Thirty-first Illinois Volunteers, Mrs. Logan, with her only living child, (now Mrs. Tucker) then three years old, returned to her father's home at Marion. The Illinois troops having been ordered into camp at Cairo, Mrs. Logan joined her husband there. During the fierce battle of Belmont, Mrs. Logan heard the booming of the guns across the turgid flood of the Mississippi. In the midst of painful and anxious suspense for the safety of her own, of whom she felt that he was in the thickest of the conflict, she gave a helping hand to the care of the wounded and suffering soldiers as they were brought back from that bloody field.

When the army entered upon the Tennessee River campaign Mrs. Logan again returned to her home, but was soon shocked by the news from Donelson that her husband had fallen at the head of his charging columns, dangerously wounded. She hastened to the scene to care for her husband. For days it was a struggle between life and death.

At Memphis, in the winter of 1862-3, Mrs. Logan again joined her husband, now a general, and remained there un

til he led his troops in the campaign which ended in the surrender of Vicksburg.

During this time, and to the end of the war, Mrs. Logan remained at Carbondale, where, out of the General's salary, they had bought an unpretentious home. Upon his return from the war General Logan was nominated by acclamation for Congressman-at-large. After his election Mrs. Logan returned to Washington and has been one of the prominent figures in Washington society ever since.

After his marriage Logan removed at once to Benton, Illinois, where he opened a law office. He was elected again to the Legislature in 1856, as a Democrat, in the celebrated Fremont campaign. During this term in the Legislature he became quite prominent through his advocacy of very important measures, and as early as 1857, was called by a colleague in the Legislature the "Black Eagle of the South." The title being suggested by his vigor and independence and very dark complexion.

CHAPTER III.

Elected to Congress.-A Delegate to the Charleston Democratic Convention of 1860.-Views of Slavery.-Trying to Stem the Tide of Secession.-His own Account of his Action.-Hasty Return to Illinois.-The Secession Sentiment about his Home. -His Speeches.-His Personal Influence.-Raising Troops.Colonel of the 31st Illinois.-Departure for the Field.

In 1858 he was nominated and elected to Congress from the Ninth Congressional District of Illinois. He was so popular that his majority is said to have been the largest ever given to a candidate in that district up to that time. He was then an Independent Democrat and received a great many votes from the Whig party. He was not fanatical or a partizan in the narrow sense in which those terms are usually spoken. He was larger than party and looked first for the good of the entire Nation.

He was a friend of Stephen A. Douglas, and did what he could for Douglas' advancement to the highest place in the Nation. In 1860 he was elected to the Thirty-seventh Congress with even greater enthusiasm than at first. He was also elected a Delegate to the Democratic Convention held at Charleston, S. C., in 1860. That Convention and what he observed of slavery in other places while on that trip, decided the question in his mind that the curse of slavery was too great to be upheld or countenanced in a land that claimed to be free.

In December of 1860, soon after Congress met he emphatically declared that "slavery was an evil which none

could reasonably deny." On the 7th of January he voted for the resolution then before Congress approving the action taken by the President for the preservation of the Union, and said that it had his unqualified approbation. He openly, in public speech and private counsel, opposed secession. When the news came that the rebels had fired on Fort Sumpter, it was the end of all thoughts of compromise with him.

When the troops so hastily collected crossed the Potomac into Virginia, he decided to go with them, and although but a private citizen he took a soldier's part in the battle of Bull Run and fought till he was left alone.

Of that battle of Bull Run, it borders on the ludicrous to read how Logan in a black suit and tall silk hat, went into the fight utterly unconscious of anything but that his Nation's flag was in danger. He went over into Virginia as an anxious spectator, but when he saw the troops were giving way, he could not resist the old warlike desire in his breast, and seizing a musket which some flying coward had thrown away, he rushed into the fight and bravely covered the retreat of many uniformed soldiers after the field was hopelessly lost.

As soon as Logan reached Washington, after the battle of Bull Run, he set himself eagerly at the task of awakening loyalty to the Union among the people of Southern Illinois. He wrote to many of his friends, urging them to raise troops for the war.

As the end of the Congressional session approached, he determined to go himself and do what he could to stay the storm which was setting in against the Union in Southern Illinois. At the adjournment of Congress Logan went directly to his home with the avowed purpose of raising troops for the war. His constituents had almost unanimously passed resolutions in favor of Secession. All his