Senator and was an unsuccessful candidate for Vice President of the United States as James G. Blaine's running mate in the election of 1884.

He enlisted in the 1st Illinois Infantry for the Mexican–American War, and received a commission as a second lieutenant and assignment as the regimental quartermaster.

[2] In 1853, John A. Logan helped pass a law which prohibited all African Americans, including freedmen, from settling in the state.

[3] U.S. Representative Logan fought at Bull Run as an unattached volunteer in a Michigan regiment, and then returned to Washington where, before he resigned his congressional seat on April 2, 1862, he entered the Union Army as Colonel of the 31st Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which he organized.

Soon after the victory at Donelson, he resigned his seat on April 2, 1862, and was promoted to brigadier general in the volunteers, as of March 21, 1862.

He returned to Illinois for the 1864 elections but rejoined the army afterward and commanded his XV corps in Sherman's Carolinas Campaign.

In December 1864, Grant became impatient with George H. Thomas's apparent unwillingness to attack immediately at Nashville and sent Logan to relieve him.

Logan was stopped in Louisville when news came that Thomas had completely smashed John Bell Hood's Confederate army in the Battle of Nashville.

[6] One of Logan's issues in the Senate was his efforts to stop any action taken to overturn the conviction in the court-martial of Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter.

His war record and his great personal following, especially among members of the Grand Army of the Republic, contributed to his nomination for Vice President in 1884 on the Republican ticket with James G.

[9][10] The 1885 US Senate election in Illinois was contentious, and Logan only won after a Democratic representative died and was replaced with a Republican.

In September 1872, the New York newspaper The Sun reported that many major politicians were bribed by Union Pacific Railroad, and Credit Mobilier.

[11][12] Logan showed signs of illness when the 49th United States Congress opened its first official session on December 7, 1886.

[14] He was temporarily interred in a vault at Rock Creek Cemetery on December 31, 1886[15] until he could be reburied in a newly constructed mortuary chapel at the United States Soldiers' and Airmen's Home National Cemetery in Washington on December 26, 1888, the second anniversary of his death.

His son, John Alexander Logan Jr., was also an army officer and posthumously received the Medal of Honor for actions during the Philippine–American War.

The State of Illinois commissioned an equestrian statue of the general that now stands in Chicago's Grant Park.