John Logan Memorial

John A. Logan, an Illinois congressman who became a soldier, was a leading Union figure in the Civil War, fighting with Federal troops in 1861 at the First Battle of Bull Run in Virginia and, after four years of service, proudly leading the Union Army of the Tennessee along Pennsylvania Avenue in the 1865 Grand Review of the victorious Union armies. Loyal to Abraham Lincoln and the Union, he later returned to politics, championed veterans’ rights as chairman of the House Committee on Military Affairs, and became the 1884 Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States. His enduring legacy appears each May in the nation’s observance of Memorial Day: as commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, a Union veterans organization, he issued General Order No. 11 in 1868 establishing May 30 as Decoration Day, which after the First World War evolved into Memorial Day to honor every American who died in wartime service, and in 1971 Congress changed the date to the last Monday in May.

Washington, District of Columbia · United States