Camp honors Illinois Army officer, politician

An Illinois National Guard training facility operated at Camp Logan in Zion from 1892 to 1974. The 220-acre site is now part of the Illinois Beach State Park.

The camp was named in honor of Gen. John A. Logan (1826-1886), an American soldier and Illinois politician.

Born in downstate Murphysboro, Logan had no formal schooling until the age of 14, when he attended Shiloh College. He served as a second lieutenant in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), and afterward continued his education in law.

Logan began his political career in 1849 when he was elected county clerk. From 1853 to 1854, and in 1857, he served in the Illinois House of Representatives. In the intervening years he was the prosecuting attorney of the Third Judicial District headquartered in Greenville, Ill.

In 1858 and 1860, he was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives. While serving his second term in Washington, D.C., the Civil War began.

Logan enlisted as a volunteer with a Michigan regiment and fought in the Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861, near Manassas, Va. --the first major land battle of the Civil War. The Union army was forced to retreat, and after the battle, Logan returned to Washington and resigned from office. He re-entered the Union army as a colonel and organized the 31st Illinois Volunteers.

Soldiers referred to him as "Black Jack," for his black eyes and hair. Considering his lack of military training, he was regarded as one of the best officers to enter the army from civilian life.

Some of Logan's military accomplishments included serving with Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the Western Theater, commanding the First Division of the Army of the Tennessee, and commanding the Third Division of James B. McPherson's XVII Corps in Grant's Vicksburg Campaign of 1863. For the Vicksburg Campaign he received a Medal of Honor--the highest military decoration awarded by the U.S. government.

After the war, Logan resumed his political career as a Republican, and was a member of Congress from 1867 to 1877 and from 1879 until his death in 1886. In 1884, James G. Blaine and John Logan ran unsuccessfully as the Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

Camp Logan opened in 1892 in honor of Logan's distinguished military and political career. In 2000, the camp and landscape structures built between the 1890s and 1950s were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

• Diana Dretske, author of "Lake County, Illinois: An Illustrated History" is the collections coordinator for the Lake County Discovery Museum. The Lake County Discovery Museum, a department of the Lake County Forest Preserves, is an award-winning regional history museum on Route 176, west of Fairfield Road near Wauconda. The museum is open from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday. Call (847) 968-3400 for information.