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1866 – 1906 and after
The veterans came home and organized under the first martyr's name: When General Robert S. Foster carried the Grand Army of the Republic's constitution into Indiana in July 1866, Auten Post of South Bend was among the first posts to organize — No. 8, named for John Auten — and for many years it was the only post in northern Indiana. Howard gives it a distinction no other Indiana post holds: when, from 1871–72 until 1879, the Department of Indiana and all its posts abandoned their organization, Auten Post alone never ceased to meet, elect its officers and observe its duties; Howard calls it the oldest Grand Army post in the state. Its first commander, in 1866, was Louis Humphreys — the city's physician-mayor of the Government section, himself a Civil War field surgeon. On 31 August 1906 the post celebrated the fortieth anniversary of its organization before the department commander and a large assemblage of comrades and citizens, and Howard prints its officers' roster entire, 1866 to 1907. The post's meetings, its Memorial Day work and its long fade belong to the Veterans section; here it stands as the Civil War's institutional footprint in the city — the company that came home and stayed organized for forty years under the name of the first of its number to fall.
Sources:
- Howard, History of St. Joseph County (1907), vol. 2, §3, "The Grand Army of the Republic" — Auten Post's organization among the first, its unbroken record through 1871–79, the fortieth anniversary of 31 August 1906, Humphreys's command in 1866, and the officers' roster.