Lincoln Calls for 75,000 Volunteers

Monday, April 15, 1861

1861 print of a Union volunteer, published by Currier & Ives shortly after Lincoln's call for volunteers. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

President Abraham Lincoln, hoping to quell the rebellion in 90 days, calls for 75,000 volunteers. Missouri is instructed to raise four regiments, a request that Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson refuses. In the end, the Union will have to enlist hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and the war will take four years of bloody fighting to resolve.