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 ORATION 
 
 Dfi.ivered at Chicago, July 22, 1897, '\'" '"k Dkdicaiion of thk 
 
 MONUMKNT TO TIIK MeMORY OF 
 
 MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN. 
 
 Erected by Uie State of Illinoia, under an Act of the legislature 
 Approved February 10, 1887. 
 
 HV 
 
 GEORGE R. PECK. 
 
 I 
 
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 GP:()R('.K R. I'HCK. 
 

ILLINOIS is i)roud and happy. Waiting' patiently 
 for a fitting time, she opens all her welcoming gates 
 and bids the world take note what breed of men she 
 rears. Here is the product of her soil, and here she 
 brings a mother's exultant heart to be enshrined. This 
 great city, the lake with all its breadth of waters, the 
 prairies stretching outward to the West, and the sky, 
 mingling light and cloud in an ever changing picture, 
 are resplendent witnesses of the scene. The event, the 
 hour, and the man are historic. 
 
 Once, upon a day like- this, the pulse of summer was 
 beating hot and fierce, when a great leader fell, as 
 leaders must fall if it be so appointed. Some are here 
 to whom it seems but yesterday. They remember the 
 clustering pines, the thickets dark with the foliage of 
 July, the spires of Atlanta wooing them forward yet a 
 little farther; and they remember, too, as they will re- 
 member always, the message, speeding like an ar- 
 row in its flight, that told how McPherson lay dead in 
 his harness, ere yet his fame had passed its dawn. 
 Surely, I am not wrong in saying that never was this 
 Nation in more deadly peril than when the Army of 
 the Tennessee was left like some great rudderless ship 
 in the grasp of the storm. 
 
 " Of what avail are men," says Carlyle, "when we 
 must needs have a man? " But the m.\n came; nay, he 
 was already there, flashing, as was his wont, in that im- 
 perious way which scorns to parley with fate, but sub- 
 dues it with a glance. On that day — July 22nd, 1864 — 
 John A. Logan was born to immortality. 
 
 Here we place his image for all generations. Here 
 
we salute the soldier, the statesman and the man, in 
 memory of that sublime moment when he took into his 
 kee])in<j the Ha^;, the issue and the cause. 
 
 Anniversaries are harmonies; and, in observing 
 them, we set history to music. On that day, none 
 looked forward to this. But time has a magician's 
 hand, and, when it has transformed real things into 
 dreams, touches the dreams and, straightway, they are 
 real again. Behold the bronze epic! Anna viriniujjie io 
 all who shall gaze on these heroic features. Out of 
 the past the Battle of Atlanta comes back distinct and 
 clear, though then but a weltering struggle. The years 
 give us the perspective; and now we see, as we could 
 not when the smoke of battle was over us, that devoted 
 army, — which was the incarnate West, — desperately 
 facing the foe, while one great thought filled every 
 heart: " Logan is here! " In their agony, having no 
 other refuge, they took counsel of faith, and bravely 
 trusted that all would go well if he guided their for- 
 tunes. 
 
 Art has a subtle vision. It worships beauty and 
 therein, if we but knew it, shows its wisdom. Poems 
 and songs are links which unite it to Nature, and to 
 human nature, which is the flower of all things. It 
 puts light and color upon canvas, only that the picture 
 may speak the universal language. It shapes ideals 
 into form, as Phidias carved in the rude marble those 
 dreams of beauty that haunted him when he thought 
 of Marathon. How can we ever forget, while this 
 brave figure guards the City's front, that art is the 
 true minister of life? Its noblest conceptions rise 
 from events which have moral grandeur in them; from 
 illumined moments, when some soul has reached its 
 
highest exaltation. Seeing tliat they are beautiful, it 
 keeps them so forevermore. 
 
 And yet, art does not create beauty, but only serves 
 it. The gleam of a sword, the bright colors of a flag 
 carried forward with the advancing line, the depths of 
 eyes " with the flame of battle in them," are true artistic 
 inspirations; but they inspire only because they have a 
 meaning, visible not to sight but to insight. 
 
 The soldier in battle does not, consciously, arrange 
 dramatic situations. When John A. Logan, summoned 
 of destiny, rode along those bleeding lines, beau- 
 tiful in the deep sense that makes the heroic 
 always beautiful, he little thought of the banners 
 that wave for him today. Goethe declared that genius 
 could always be known by its doing first the duty that 
 was nearest. The Greeks believed that ships steered 
 by the gods always came to port; but a truer knowledge 
 counts upon the practical skill and courage of the man 
 at the helm. 
 
 That day at Atlanta had none of the romantic sur- 
 roundings which give artificial renown to battle fields. 
 No pyramids, iiiding the grim secrets of the centuries, 
 looked down upon them. It was not Lodi, where a 
 general could dash across a bridge to victory. There 
 were no narrow paths to glory. It was breast-to-breast 
 fighting, such as seldom comes in any war; a confused 
 mass, struggling against an enemy that was everywhere. 
 And in the midst of them was Logan, — chief, not be- 
 cause of his epaulets, but because the command had 
 fallen on one who knew what to do and could not 
 breathe until it was done. 
 
 He is past all flattery. Shall we call him brave? 
 Others have worn that crimson badge. Great men be- 
 
come types. The peojile single them out, with the 
 ready common sense which belongs to no man, but to 
 all men. Whatever is heroic, they can make classic. 
 Logan is Our Great Volunteer. So they have named 
 him, and so he will be known when we are forgotten. 
 His place in the war is secure. The chroniclers 
 of the future will write of him as Froissart did of the 
 knights and heroes of media'val times. It is, and will 
 be always, a glorious story. 
 
 The profession of arms is an inspiring one. There 
 is a lustre upon it, which, in every age, has attracted 
 chivalric spirits, and made them happy to be its orna- 
 ments and its exemplars. The scholar, whether in 
 business, in politics or in war, is almost always superior 
 to his untrained rival. Grant and Sherman and Sheri- 
 dan illustrate the advantage which a country possesses 
 that has in its service men instructed in military knowl- 
 edge. But a puissant nation, such as came into the 
 meditations of John Milton, when it rouses itself from 
 sleep, vaults over scholastic rules, and puts men into its 
 ranks, little regarding the methods which are taught in 
 schools. Science has always found its way into columns 
 that move forward. Cajsar and Marlborough and Fred- 
 erick were great commanders; but those who read with 
 seeing eyes perceive that generals only lead men; and 
 that battles, however planned, are usually determined 
 by the plain courage of the rank anti file. 
 
 In calling him The Great Volunteer, we have, un- 
 wittingly, done injustice to Logan. He was not a mere 
 fighter. He had the rare genius of leadership- Ask 
 those who served with him, and they will answer: " Men 
 whom Logan led, never turned back." Only a com- 
 prehensive mind can take events as they come and 
 
mould them to its will, as if they had been ordered in 
 advance. Regiment, Brigade, Division, Corps, Army, 
 — these are the steps he took, and never trippetl nor 
 faltered. 
 
 The real jiroof of genius is the manner in which 
 high responsibilities are met- Abraham Lincoln, in tlur 
 school of Sangamon, was hardly a prophecy of him 
 who became the foremost man of all this world. 
 Galena and Appomattox are wide apart ; but Grant 
 spanned them. The law of growth rules; and only 
 those who can rise to occasion are great. Measure 
 Logan by this unfailing test and he becomes collossal. 
 Emerson tells, in a familiar line, how Michael Angelo 
 "wrought in a sad sincerity;" but so in truth does every 
 man who, in the stress of duty, builds domes or carves 
 statues or fights battles. 
 
 Let us see Logan under the light that reveals motives 
 and acts. The summons that came, in the Spring of 
 1861, found us, as such a summons always does, unpre- 
 pared. Peace is never quite ready for war. It was 
 the month of flowers, 
 
 " When prdud-piccl April, dressed in all hi? trim, 
 Hath put a spirit of youth in everything." 
 
 The seed was waiting to be dropped into the earth ; 
 the sun, swinging round to the North, was calling every 
 field and farm to the oft repeated, but never compre- 
 hended, mystery of a new^ birth. The blow fell while 
 we were welcoming the buttercups ; and it gave such a 
 hurt as we never felt before. It was cruel beyond all 
 our imaginings, for it seemed to write Failure as the 
 end of everything for which we had hoped. Thus it 
 touched our pride as well as our affections. More than 
 all, it brought the deepest grief to those who were best 
 able to appreciate its latent meanings. 
 
6 
 
 John /\. Lofran, onl}' thirty-five years of age, was 
 already a striking figure in our national politics. He 
 sat in the House of Representatives, that body which 
 touches the people at every point, and in it he was a 
 tribune. Himself triuni])hantly re-elected the pre- 
 ceeding autumn, he had seen his jmrty beaten, his 
 adored leader, Douglas, defeated, and — what to him was 
 infinitely worse — his country hopelessly drifting into 
 civil war. In those sad days every heart had its own 
 sorrow. No one can doubt that he remembered, as 
 true men do, his party ties ; the friends who had been 
 so staunch ; his boyhood service in the war with 
 Mexico ; and those nameless tender affections which 
 link strong natures to the scenes of childhood. May- 
 hap, too, he thought of a future over-cast and clouded, 
 of shattered hopes, and plans that never could be real- 
 ized. Then came the test. John A. Logan was, in the 
 heart of him, gold. Out of the crucible the metal 
 flowed, melted, indeed, but melted into fineness. He 
 was not the man to cower before any responsibility, for 
 in his veins was that rich Celtic blood, which makes- 
 the resolute, onward character. 
 
 " well for him whose will is strong ! 
 He suffer.s, but he will not suffer long ; 
 He suffers, lnit he cunncit suffer wrontr." 
 
 Logan cut the knot, as brave men do. He went into 
 the war before he had a legal right, and fought at Bull 
 Run under no appointment but that of his own un- 
 daunted heart. On that ill-starred day, grave states- 
 men were pondering at the Capitol, as they had never 
 pondered before. Doubtless the record of Con- 
 gress shows that Logan was absent without leave. But 
 out beyond the Potomac he was lighting, musket in 
 
hand, in the ranks of the fated arm} of the Union. H( 
 had deserted the House to be a volunteer for the war. 
 They tell of him yet, as he pressed forward through the 
 smoke, in the silk hat he had forijotten to change, but 
 which never became him so much as when it towered 
 that day over his swarthy face, and those eyes which 
 were, indeed, the windows of his soul. 
 
 After Bull Run, he went back to his home in South- 
 ern Illinois, facing friend and foe alike, with the defiant 
 note which told them — what they already knew — that, 
 come what might, he was for the Union and the War. 
 That day he conquered " Egypt." Everywhere he sowed 
 the words that Douglas had uttered: "There can be 
 but two parties, patriots and traitors." Then came 
 the regiment he raised, and, after that, in a brave, 
 orderly sequence, Belmont, Donelson, Corinth, X'icks- 
 burg, Atlanta, and— PEACE. 
 
 Something, perhaps, I ought to say of his nature as a 
 man; the nature that ruled him, as temperament always 
 does, in field, in camp and in senate. He was not 
 easily controlled. There was iron in his blood; and 
 there was fire, too, which, when he was aroused, blazed 
 into a consuming wrath. But this is his glory: the self- 
 willed, dominant temper always yielded submissively 
 to the stronger spirit of patriotism. 
 
 Take one or two examples, of the many, which illus- 
 trate this sublime characteristic. When Logan had 
 fought the Battle of Atlanta, and saved a day that was 
 lost; when he had shown the consummate qualities of a 
 great leader; he thought, and he had a right to think. 
 he might keep what he had won,— the command of an 
 army that loved him. For less than he had done. Na- 
 poleon made men Marshals of the Empire; and bade 
 
them he the companions of Davout and Ney and 
 Massena. But it was not to be. The Army of the 
 Tennessee was sriven to another; and Logan went back 
 to his corps, making no sign. 
 
 •' Jly nature is subdued 
 To what it works in," 
 
 wrote Shakespeare, in that sonnet which, critics say, 
 revealed his inmost heart. No words can more truly 
 shcnv us Logan's heart; for all he did, or hoped or as- 
 pired to was subdued by one master passion, his 
 country. 
 
 Later, when the war was almost over, and the in- 
 evitable triumph was plainly visible, there came to him 
 an op])ortunity which would have been a trial and a 
 temptation to most men. But it was not to him. Grant 
 sent him to relieve Thomas, antl, in doing so, gave 
 notice to all the world that Logan was fit for high 
 command. It was one of the most picturesque situa- 
 tions of the war. The Army of the Potomac was hold- 
 ing the Confederacy by the throat, while Sherman, 
 marching to the sea, was cutting all its veins, and 
 arteries. Meanwhile. Thomas, with beleaguered Nash- 
 ville at his back, was making ready, slowly but surely, 
 lor the blow that should kill. Grant, the Imperturbable, 
 watching the movements of all the armies, was, for 
 once, impatient, and could wait no longer. He called 
 for his Thunderbolt; and sent Logan to make the fight. 
 I could name men, with stars on their shoulders, who 
 would have seized that opportunity to humiliate the 
 brave Virginian, whom men well called The Rock of 
 Chickamauga. He, like Logan, had become a type. 
 He was a synonym for enduring courage which stays 
 forever in its place. 
 
9 
 
 But Logan, hastening to the field where Thomas 
 and Hood were preparing for their last grapple, 
 stopped at Louisville; not because it was best for his 
 own fortunes, but because it was right. He, who wouUl 
 have flown to any place where danger lay, haltd aet 
 that supreme moment. He ruled his own soul; and 
 his conduct shines with a great light, when we read, in 
 Sherman's Memoirs, that, less than six months before, 
 after the death of McPherson, Thomas — conscien- 
 tiously, no doubt — remonstrated warmly against giving 
 the command of the Army of the Tennessee to Logan. 
 The day Logan halted on his way to Nashville 
 brought him the noblest revenge that ever one brave 
 man had over another. In his pocket was the order 
 which gave him the right to supersede the General 
 who had said he ought not to command the Army of 
 the Tennesee. It is like some story of old romance. 
 Both now are gone. Their armies will never camp 
 again, but the Nation loves and honors the two men 
 who were thus drawn together in those last great days. 
 The world will long remember that brave deed when 
 Logan stopped at Louisville, and left Thomas to go 
 forward, in his own way, to a victory which was like 
 Cromwell's Crowning Mercy. 
 
 This day is dedicated to Logan as a soldier. He 
 won it from the calendar, and made it his own. But, 
 in the midst of all its pageantry, let us not forget 
 that he was a statesman in the most trying times of 
 our history. It is not for me, at such a moment, 
 to discuss any question of party opinion. Logan was a 
 man of positive views; plain, direct and uncompro- 
 mising. For what he believed to be right he 
 was as fearless in the Senate as on the field. 
 
10 ' 
 
 He was for freedom; and for all those great amend- 
 ments of the Constitution that made freedom organic 
 in this Nation; he was for equality before the law; 
 he was for the common soldier who had felt the 
 wound, which is the soldier's best decoration; he 
 was for the national honor on land and sea; for the 
 .Vrmy and Navy, and for force, if need be, to defend 
 every right which ought to be recognized without force. 
 
 He loved Illinois, and Illinois loved him — the son 
 she had nursed in her own cradle. He was loyal to 
 her, and faithful to the uttermost; but he believed, as 
 this great State has always believed, that " the soil of 
 Illinois is the soil of the United States." 
 
 It is little to say that he was honest. Through 
 all his great career he went unscathed, and no 
 man ever whispered in his ear a thought of 
 personal gain. If any one had ventured, he would 
 have seen, in that flashing eye, such a warning as made 
 the slave, sent to kill Caius Marius, f\y quaking from 
 the presence of him who had been Consul. 
 
 If we listen, we shall hear an echo of all we do to- 
 day. The people, e\erywhere, are thinking of him, 
 because he always thought of them. It is an old lesson, 
 and a good lesson. We never needed it more than now. 
 If he were alive, what voice would ring like his 
 for civic honor? What form would lead like his, 
 the Nation, the State and the City? Nothing was too 
 great, nothing too small, if only it were right, for him to 
 espouse. To all the duties of peace, he brought the 
 same brave determination that made him great in war. 
 
 He, more than any other, created the Grand Army 
 of the Republic — that organization which makes us re- 
 member what we are prone to forget. Here his form 
 
11 
 
 will sleep forever, guarded by them and by those who 
 follow them. I greet you, Comrades, who now again 
 attest your fealty to him, and to the Nation for whosi- 
 honor you so often followed him to victory. 
 
 It was he who gave us the sweet observance of Me- 
 morial Day. Only a poet could have thought it; only 
 a poet could have made it come true. It is, beyond all 
 others, our dearest holiday; our festival of memory, 
 love and beauty. We shall keej:) it forever, with all the 
 flowers that grow upon prairies and in gardens and on 
 mountain sides. And there will be tears. 
 
 Is it not something to remember, and to be jjroutl 
 of, that, in this great ceremony,, those who followed 
 another flag have come to pay their tribute to the 
 Citizen-Soldier? Men of the South, the Grand Army 
 welcomes you; the Loyal Legion welcomes you; Illinois 
 welcomes you; and all the North greets you with an 
 open hand. Every soldier is thankful that he has 
 lived to behold such omens of the future. Side by 
 side we march to-day, and all men see at last how well 
 blue and gray become each other, when, together, 
 they bear the flag of union, liberty and peace. 
 
 Here we make a sacred place. Here we consecrate 
 a name already consecrated in our bravest annals. 
 We give the statue to the world, in presence of the wife 
 he loved and honored, and whom we love and honor. 
 No friend was ever so true and devoted as this wife 
 of his youth, who became the wife of his fame. She 
 lives in the proud and tender memory of days 
 that cannot return. This is to be their everlasting 
 resting-place; and here generations will bow reverently 
 by the dust of those whom God joined together. Their 
 children and their children's children learn in all these 
 majestic rites how great a name they bear. 
 
12 
 
 Illinois has kept her trust. This great Common- 
 wealth hails to-day the noble image she has carried in 
 her heart so long. It is worthy of her, worthy of him 
 who wrought it, and worthy of him whose features it 
 embodies. He is not ours alone; but yet we claim him 
 first. In coming 3'cars, the throngs that crowd the 
 avenue will see a silent figure always on duty. They 
 will know, — and all the world will know, — it is Logan. 
 
APR 11 ^903 
 
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