Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/28

Rh When General Logan rose to speak the next morning there were in the crowd who listened, more than a score of men who had sworn to take his life if he declared for the Union. But John A. Logan mounted the wagon drawn up in the public square and proceeded by the force of his eloquence, his reasoning, his persuasion and by the outpouring of the passionate patriotism to turn so completely the tide of feeling that on getting down he immediately enlisted one hundred and ten men for the first Company of the Regiment which he proposed raising for the defense of the Union. Within ten days one thousand and ten men were enrolled as their country's defenders for three years, or until peace was declared, and he received from Governor Yates a commission as Colonel of the Thirty-first Illinois Infantry Volunteers. During this period and while the regiment was being organized, Mrs. Logan acted as his aide-de-camp, carrying his dispatches from Marion and other points to Carbondale, the nearest telegraph station, alone during the day and at night accompanied by no more formal escort than a village lad named Willie Chew.

Logan saved Southern Illinois to the Union, but what measure of credit for that great exploit should be accorded his plucky wife, women of America may judge!

During his campaigns in the war which followed, Mrs. Logan took every opportunity offered to be near her husband. She followed him to many a well-fought field and endured the privations of camp life as thousands of other patriotic women did, without murmur, only too glad to share her husband's perils or to minister to the sick and wounded of his regiment for the sake of being near him.

When the troops were ordered from Cairo—on the expedition to Fort Donelson and Fort Henry—Mrs. Logan returned to Marion. The pay of our Colonels and Officers of higher rank was at that time small and uncertain and perhaps one