I do not, however, believe that Blaine and Logan got along very well together in the campaign. In my opinion Logan felt that he would have been a stronger candidate for the Presidency than Blaine, as after events proved that he would. Had Logan headed the ticket, there would have been none of the scandal nor charges of corruption that were made in the campaign with Blaine at the head. There would have been no "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," which in the opinion of many people resulted in the defeat of Blaine and Logan.

Whatever the causes, the ticket was defeated; and then came Logan's famous fight for re-election to the Senate, continuing three and a half months, the Legislature being tied; but the fight ended by a rather clever trick on the part of Dan Shepard and S. H. Jones of Springfield, in electing by a "still hunt" a Republican in the thirty-fourth District to succeed a Democrat who died during the session, and finally on May 19, 1885, I received a telegram from Logan while in New York saying, "I have been elected."

Three or four days before General Logan's death he and Mrs. Logan were at my house to dinner, to meet some friends—General and Mrs. Henderson and Senator Allison. After dinner, we were in the smoking- room. General Logan was talking about the book he had recently written, showing a conspiracy on the part of the South, entitled "The Great Conspiracy." He had sent each of us a copy of the book, and he remarked that he ventured to say that neither of us had read a word of it; the truth was that we had not, and we admitted it.

General and Mrs. Logan went home a little early, because he was then suffering with rheumatism. They invited Mrs. Cullom and me to dinner the following Sunday evening. General Logan had grown worse, and he could not attend at the table, but rested on a couch in an adjoining room. He never recovered, and passed away some two or three days afterward. I was present at his death-bed. The last words he uttered were, "Cullom, I am terribly sick."

The death of no other General, with the possible exception of General Grant, was so sorrowfully and universally mourned by the volunteer soldiery of the Union as was the death of General Logan.

CHAPTER XIII GENERAL JOHN M. PALMER

General Palmer had a long, varied, and honorable career, beginning as an Anti-Nebraska Democrat in the State Senate of Illinois, in 1855, and ending as a Gold Democrat in the United States Senate in 1897, after being for a time a Republican.

I first met him as a member of the State Senate, in which service he showed considerable ability. His one leading characteristic, I should say, was his independence, without any regard to what party he might belong to or what the question might be. He would not yield his own convictions to his party. If the party to which he belonged differed from him on any question, he did not hesitate to abandon it and join the opposition party; and this change he did make several times during his public career. He was one of the four Anti-Nebraska Democrats in the Legislature of 1855, who might be said to have defeated Lincoln for the Senate by supporting Trumbull, until it became apparent that if Lincoln continued as a candidate, Governor Matteson would be elected. Lincoln sacrificed himself to insure the election of Judge Trumbull, a Free-soiler. The other Anti-Nebraska Democrats, who with General Palmer, elected Trumbull, were Norman B. Judd, Burton C. Cook, G. T. Allen, and Henry S. Baker, the last two from Madison County.

For some reason or other General Palmer resigned from the Senate. He was one of the first to join the Republican party. He was a delegate to the first Republican State Convention of Illinois. I attended that convention, and recall that General Palmer made quite an impression on the assemblage, in discussing some question with General Turner, himself quite an able man, and then Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Illinois Legislature. Intellectually, General Palmer was a superior man, but he lacked stability of judgment. You were never quite sure that you could depend on him, or feel any certainty as to what course he would take on any question.

His qualifications as a lawyer were not exceptional, nevertheless I would rather have had him as my attorney to try a bad case than almost any lawyer I ever knew; his talent for manipulating a jury nearly, if not quite, offset all his legal shortcomings.