His fifth cousin William Kellogg lived in the area and served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1857 to 1863.

When Lincoln became president in 1861, he appointed Kellogg as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Nebraska Territory.

By 1862, he had risen to the rank of Colonel and played an important role at a small battle near Sikeston, Missouri.

After the Civil War, Kellogg was elected as a companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States.

On April 14, 1865, hours before his assassination, Lincoln appointed Kellogg as the federal collector of customs of the port of New Orleans.

[4] Former Confederate Assistant Secretary of War John Archibald Campbell was involved in the controversy surrounding Kellogg.

He was a member of the "Committee of One Hundred" that went to Washington to persuade President Grant to end his support of what they called the "Kellogg usurpation".

A Senate committee reported that the entire Louisiana 1872 election had been unfair and that both state governments were illegal.

Casey also held the lucrative post of New Orleans Customs Collector, to which Grant reappointed him in March 1873.

In January 1875 even President Grant admitted that Louisiana's 1872 election "was a gigantic fraud, and there are no reliable returns of its result.

In 1874 the anti-Republican White League sent 5,000 paramilitary men into New Orleans, wherein the Battle of Liberty Place, they defeated the 3500-man Metropolitan Police and state militia.

Despite the intense backlash against the Republican Party among white Democrats in the South, Kellogg was elected to the United States Senate in 1876.

Kellogg was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1882, defeating the incumbent Democrat Chester Bidwell Darrall and served one term from 1883 to 1885.