ecords at
national headquarters, and the substantial downfall of the posts in the
West, where its great strength was at first, the history of the early
years of the order is left in much uncertainty. But the organization had
in the western states a wild, riotous growth; the meagre reports extant
naming two hundred thousand as the membership in 1867; but the utter
lack of organization, and the intrusion of politics, left the order,
almost as speedily as it had sprung into existence, a complete wreck.

At the close of the year 1870, the department of Illinois, where the
Grand Army had its birth, had been reduced from over three hundred
posts, and a membership of forty thousand, to less than twenty-five
posts, and these barely existing in name; and two years later its entire
membership was but two hundred and thirty-eight. Indiana, with two
hundred and seventy-nine posts, and thirty thousand membership, had
become utterly disorganized; Iowa, with one hundred and forty-four
posts, had ceased to have a recognized existence; the thirty posts in
Kansas had dwindled to nine; Minnesota had shrunk from twenty-five to
two posts; the one hundred and twenty-nine posts in Missouri had no
department existence; in Wisconsin, of seventy-nine, less than a dozen
were left, and in Pennsylvania, one hundred and forty-three out of two
hundred and twenty-four had been disbanded. At the session of the
National Encampment in May, 1870, the Adjutant-General reported that
only three departments, Massachusetts being one, could give the exact
number of the members upon their rolls, and the national headquarters
were then involved in over $3,000 of indebtedness.

But in Massachusetts, the founders of the Grand Army of the Republic
wisely bolted and double-barred the doors against the intrusion of
partisan topics, and the growth of the organization was steady and
continuous. In January, 1868, comrade A. B. R. Sprague was elected to
succeed Commander Cushman, and at the end of his term was able to report
seventy-three posts, with a membership of six thousand one hundred and
eighty-nine.

How well the department of Massachusetts kept, through these early
years, the Grand Army banner in the front, is evidenced by the
following:--

The percentage in this department alone of the entire membership in the
United States was, in 1872, 38 per cent; 1873, 42 per cent; 1874, 43 per
cent; 1875, 38 per cent; 1876, 32 per cent; 1877, 33 per cent; 1878, 30
per