Hundred Days Men - Background

Background

In the spring of 1864, the Governor of Ohio, John Brough, was concerned with preventing Confederate invasions of the North, as Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan's cavalry raid of Ohio had done during 1863. As the Civil War entered its third year, troops were increasingly difficult to raise both North and South. In the North, substantial bounties were offered to induce enlistment and the unpopular draft and substitute system was used to meet quotas.

Brough proposed to enlist the state militia into federal service for a period of 100 days to provide short-term troops that would serve as guards, laborers, and rear echelon soldiers to free more veteran units for combat duty. This would increase the number of men in the Northern armies campaigning in the South and allowing the Union to achieve victory more quickly—hopefully in one hundred or fewer days.

Brough expanded the idea and contacted the governors of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and New Jersey to do likewise to raise 100,000 men to offer the Lincoln Administration. The governors of these five states submitted their suggestion to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who placed the proposal before President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln immediately approved the plan.