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 v The Battles of  W   Brough took office in January , an uneven economy and rising inflation were hurting many Ohioans, including soldiers’ families. As people suffered through a frigid winter, parts of Ohio seemed drained of militaryaged men. Mounting calls for aid to soldiers’ families prompted the state legislature to increase state taxes and to grant county and municipal officials the discretion to increase local taxes to provide relief. The state legislature also overhauled the state militia, creating the Ohio National Guard under the authority of the governor. Brough took advantage of this reform and ordered the National Guard into service for three months. Ohio’s Hundred Days Men would reinforce the federal army and free regular soldiers for duty at the front. National Guard service proved popular , at least initially, as a means to experience military life behind the lines while gaining credit for time served if drafted. Ohioans were less eager to enlist for three years. In February, March, July, and December, the federal government demanded of Ohio almost , soldiers. As was the case throughout the North, the cost of securing a substitute increased, especially after Congress repealed commutation in July . While fewer men purchased their way out of service, communities competed to raise bounty money. Ohio did not offer financial inducements at the state level to encourage volunteers, but local, county, and federal bounties were available from the earliest days of war. By , escalating bounty prices burdened communities throughout Ohio. The average bounty per recruit was between four and five hundred dollars by fall , approximately a fourfold increase over the bounties received earlier in the war.1 Still, Ohio could not raise sufficient volunteers to meet its quotas. Drafts were ordered in May and September. Communities could not keep up with the calls for men. Prices for substitutes escalated, the burden of raising bounties increased The opposition party tried to transform the war’s mounting costs into political capital. Despite losing the state election in , the Democratic Party remained strong and in  mounted an energetic campaign for George McClellan as president . Democrats criticized the Lincoln administration for conscription, taxation, and trying to impose racial equality. The party remained divided, however, between  Peace Democrats who called for a cessation of hostilities and War Democrats. At the Democratic national convention, only half the Ohio delegation—including Vallandigham , who returned from exile in Canada—supported War Democrat George McClellan. The majority of Ohio’s delegation eventually embraced McClellan’s candidacy, but internal divisions weakened the campaign. McClellan, who repudiated the party’s endorsement of peace negotiations and its declaration that the war was a failure, was presented as either a peace or a war candidate depending on the audience in Ohio.2 Republicans also faced divisions in their party. Radicals, claiming that Lincoln’s program of Reconstruction was too lenient toward white Southerners and unclear on the status of freedpeople, flirted with nominating Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase for president. The ever-ambitious Chase encouraged his supporters, used his cabinet position to build up patronage, and publicly supported universal emancipation and black suffrage. Chase’s efforts lost momentum, however, and when the Ohio Republican convention endorsed Lincoln, Chase withdrew and tendered his resignation, which Lincoln accepted. Another group of anti-Lincoln Radicals, along with some conservatives who opposed Lincoln’s leadership in military affairs, nominated John C. Frémont in a convention held at Cleveland on May , . This challenge to Lincoln also collapsed. For Republicans , the election was a referendum on the war, and they associated support for the troops with the preservation of the Union and votes for the Republican Party. One Jackson, Ohio, Republican expressed the party’s desire for leaders who “like John Brown’s soul will keep on, in spite of Northern Copperheads and the rebels in the Southern Confederacy.”3 Soldiers—who overwhelmingly supported Lincoln—wrote home to their families predicting military success and rejecting Democrats’ calls for a negotiated peace. The Republican Party in Ohio based its campaign on the national party platform, which stated that only unconditional surrender by the Confederacy would end the fighting. In the summer of , this seemed an ill-fated approach. Grant suffered staggering casualties in the Wilderness and at Cold Harbor. Other Union campaigns, including Sheridan’s in the Shenandoah Valley, stalled as well. Only William Tecumseh Sherman’s army moving through Georgia met with success . War weariness oppressed Ohio, as the draft cast a shadow over the state. News of Sherman’s capture of Atlanta...

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