The enlistments of the men who volunteered in 1861 were up in 1864, and a draft was instituted to help fill the ranks. A county that could fill its quota with volunteers would not have men drafted, so there were bounties offered for enlistment which varied from state to state. The highest were to the men already in the army for their reenlistment, but all volunteers received some sort of bonus.

In spite of his miserable experience in the army hospital and in full knowledge of the casualties inflicted on the 23rd Wisconsin Volunteers, Ed Richmond reenlisted in Company C of the 42nd Regiment, Wisconsin Volunteers, which was mustered in on September 7, 1864. There were some familiar names in the regiment: Northrup, two Burlingames, and two Richmonds, as Ed's brother Dave enlisted with him. They moved to Cairo, Illinois, September 20 and remained there on post and garrison duty for the rest of the war, although detachments were sent out to other points in Illinois from time to time.

The 23rd Regiment, Wisconsin Volunteers, was mustered out on July 4, 1865, two years to the day after Vicksburg fell. The regiment lost one officer and 40 enlisted men killed and mortally wounded during service and five officers and 262 enlisted men from disease, for a total of 308 or about 30 percent of the regiiment. These figures do not take into account the men who were wounded and survived or those like Ed, Gib, and Thomas who were discharged because of illness.

When the news that the war was over reached the 42rd Regiment, Ed Richmond was so excited that he dented his fife when he hit it on a post while waving it in the air. The regiment was discharged on the twentieth of June, 1865. During the nine and a half months it was in service, no men were killed or mortally wounded but 58 were lost from disease.

Ed Richmond and Mary Van Ness were married September 16. in the 1870s he built a house on a hill in Lodi which was home to the family for the next eighty years. They had two girls, Mary Emma and Grace, and two boys, George and Albert. Albert's children were Laurence and Jessie June, the only grandchildren of Ed and Mary to reach adulthood.