John A. Logan’s Speech Aug 19, 1861
Barely four months after a party of 10 or 15 had gotten together in a Marion, Illinois saloon in 1861 and organized a meeting calling for the secession of Williamson County from the Union. General John A. Logan rode into town and addressed an explosive crowd on the square in a two-hour speech from the bed of a wagon on the Marion Square.
General Logan was to make his appeal for Union support in Marion on August 18, 1861, but a late train delayed the speech until the afternoon of August 19.
His wife, Mrs. Mary Logan, in ” Reminiscences of a Soldier’s Wife,” recalled that on August 19, “as we approached Marion, the people began to gather about the buggy, cheering and shouting their welcome to General Logan: crowding so near to grasp his hand that it was almost impossible for the horse we were driving to move.”
“The very crowd was enough to alarm one; they were so excited seemingly on the verge of violent demonstration. When the hour arrived (to address the crowd), he came to me and begged me on no account to go into the street. He felt that there might be trouble and assured me that he would be unnerved if he thought I was in the crowd, should mob violence seize the half-crazed people. I gave my promise, with a mental reservation not to keep it.”
According to Mrs. Logan’s account, after Logan began speaking “a deathlike stillness prevailed; the most turbulent spirit in the crowd was as quiet as the dead. You could only hear his (Logan’s) sonorous voice as he with great deliberation pictured the situation of affairs, the inevitable consequences of rebellion against the government should the theory of secession prevail.”
Toward the close of Logan’s speech, he said, “The time has come when a man must be for or against his country, not for or against his state. How long could one state stand up against another, or two or three states against others? The Union once dissolved; we should have innumerable confederacies and rebellions. I for one shall stand or fall for this Union and shall this day enroll for the war. I want as many of you as will come with me.
If you say, “No” and see your best interests and welfare of your homes and your children in another direction, may God protect you.”
Then, an old fifer, Luke Sanders began playing and leading the way to volunteer. Sanders had been a fifer in the same regiment with Logan in the Mexican War. Then Gabriel Cox, drummer with that same regiment, began beating an old drum and off the men marched to enlist their aid to the Union. Logan managed to change their minds and ended up signing up 158 soldiers to fight for the Union.
Among those who stepped forward to enlist for military duty was Matthew Stout. When asked why he signed up, his words were strong, ”I feel the Union should be preserved.”
Four months earlier in Williamson County, on April 15, a group of townspeople had adopted a resolution calling for the secession from the Union they were now willing to serve. The resolution for secession was repealed by a different group of townspeople on April 16. The original group planned to reorganize a meeting on April 27, but Logan came back into town and dissuaded them.
(Extracted from 1989 Sesquicentennial History, WCHS)