The homecoming that happened in Indianapolis, 1865

1862 — 1865 · South Bend's regiments, and the capital

The going: The Civil War's South Bend gatherings were departures. The Seventy-third Indiana was mustered into service at South Bend on August 16, 1862, under Colonel Gilbert Hathaway, its Company C raised in this county; the Eighty-seventh was organized at South Bend the same month and accepted at Indianapolis on August 31, leaving for the front the same day; and the county's men filled companies in the 15th, 29th, 35th, 48th, 99th, and 128th besides. Through the war years the fairground on Portage Avenue did duty as Camp Rose, the county's military gathering place — the war's use of the ground is told with the fair's, in Farms & Crops. The 73rd's war ended in Alabama railroad guard duty; the 87th marched to the sea with Sherman, through the Carolinas, and into the Grand Review at Washington.

The return, as the county histories record it: The homecoming this section went looking for is not in the county record, and the record's own version is printed instead. The 87th was mustered out on June 10, 1865, and "returned to Indianapolis," in Howard's words. The 73rd was mustered out at Nashville on July 1, 1865, and Chapman closes its story in one sentence: "Returning home the Seventy-third was publicly received in the State House Grove, at Indianapolis, and addressed by Governor Morton and General Hovey." The reception was the state's, at the capital; the men came back to South Bend from there as discharged individuals, and neither Chapman (1880) nor Howard (1907) records any public reception in South Bend itself. Howard prints what Company C's homecoming weighed against: of its members, two were killed in battle, two accidentally killed, one killed in military prison, and twenty-one died of wounds or disease. If the city's newspapers of July 1865 recorded a welcome of their own, it was not reached for this build; the county histories' silence is the documented state of the question, and it is printed as such rather than filled with the celebration the occasion invites a writer to imagine.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), "Military History" — the 73rd mustered in at South Bend, August 16, 1862, and mustered out at Nashville, July 1, 1865; the 87th in the Grand Review, mustered out June 10, 1865, "returned to Indianapolis"; Company C's losses.
2. Chas. C. Chapman & Co., History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880) — the county's regiments; the 87th organized at South Bend and accepted at Indianapolis August 31, 1862; and the 73rd "publicly received in the State House Grove, at Indianapolis, and addressed by Governor Morton and General Hovey."
3. Farms & Crops section of this history — Camp Rose on the Portage Avenue fairground.