ery hard work for a few days to
bring all the men into anything like subordination; but the great
majority favored discipline, and by the application of a little regular
army punishment all were reduced to as good discipline as one could ask.
The ten regiments which had volunteered in the State service for thirty
days, it will be remembered, had done so with a pledge to go into the
National service if called upon within that time. When they volunteered
the government had only called for ninety days' enlistments. Men were
called now for three years or the war. They felt that this change of
period released them from the obligation of re-volunteering. When I was
appointed colonel, the 21st regiment was still in the State service.
About the time they were to be mustered into the United States service,
such of them as would go, two members of Congress from the State,
McClernand and Logan, appeared at the capital and I was introduced to
them. I had never seen either of them before, but I had read a great
deal about them, and particularly about Logan, in the newspapers. Both
were democratic members of Congress, and Logan had been elected from the
southern district of the State, where he had a majority of eighteen
thousand over his Republican competitor. His district had been settled
originally by people from the Southern States, and at the breaking out
of secession they sympathized with the South. At the first outbreak of
war some of them joined the Southern army; many others were preparing to
do so; others rode over the country at night denouncing the Union, and
made it as necessary to guard railroad bridges over which National
troops had to pass in southern Illinois, as it was in Kentucky or any of
the border slave states. Logan's popularity in this district was
unbounded. He knew almost enough of the people in it by their Christian
names, to form an ordinary congressional district. As he went in
politics, so his district was sure to go. The Republican papers had
been demanding that he should announce where he stood on the questions
which at that time engrossed the whole of public thought. Some were
very bitter in their denunciations of his silence. Logan was not a man
to be coerced into an utterance by threats. He did, however, come out
in a speech before the adjournment of the special session of Congress
which was convened by the President soon after his inauguration, and
announced his undying loyalty and dev
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