A day or two later, these comrades organized a second post at Nantucket and a third at Taunton. Comrade Cushman exhibited such zeal and earnestness in this work that provisional Commander Devens insisted on having that position formally transferred; and the latter therefore resigned, and asked for the appointment of Mr. Cushman in his stead, which was accordingly made. As in the case of the national history of the Order, partially consequent thereon, but in a larger degree because of the destruction of all the department records in the great Boston fire, the early story of the Grand Army in Massachusetts is incomplete in many details, but it appears certain that during the existence of the provisional department under Comrade Cushman, ten posts were organized. On the seventh of May, 1867, a permanent department was organized by a delegate convention called at New Bedford, Commander Cushman being elected Department, or, as then termed, Grand Commander. Inspiring his new official associates with something of his own ardor, Commander Cushman divided the state into ten districts, with a recruiting officer to each, and the "missionary work" was so vigorously prosecuted that the commander was able to welcome to the regular annual encampment in January, 1868, the representatives of over forty posts, with a membership of fully two thousand, while applications for nearly a score of additional posts were nearly ready for consideration. During the year 1867, a visit of Gen. P. H. Sheridan to Boston was made the occasion of a torchlight parade of the posts of the Grand Army, and the fine appearance made by the organization on this first public display attracted general attention, and was doubtless one means of largely increasing the membership. As has been stated, on account of the careless compilation of records 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.