Edward D. Townsend was born in Boston in 1817. He graduated West Point in 1837, served in the Second Seminole War (Florida War), and eventually reached the rank of captain in 1848. Townsend served throughout the war in the Adjutant Generals office. Townsend would go on after the war to achieve the rank of brigadier general in 1869. He died in Washington, DC in 1893.

At the time General Orders No. 190 was issued in June of 1863, the Union war effort was in a precarious position. The important Union victory at Antietam in the fall of 1862 had been followed by little progress in defeating Confederate forces in Virginia. To maintain a steady income of new recruits, the United States Congress passed the Enrollment Act which was enacted on March 3, 1863. This act required every male citizen and immigrants who had filed for citizenship between ages twenty and forty-five to enroll. The Enrollment Act proved to be unpopular, and the issuing of General Order No.190 was intended to aid in recruiting for the Regular Army. The order offered bounties for enlistments for up to five years of service, detailing a $2 premium on enlistment, plus $13 advance pay, and almost $400 bounty to new soldiers, spread out at $50 per year. Three weeks after the issuing of these new premiums and expectations of the war to continue until 1868, riots broke out in New York over the demand for new soldiers to fight in the war, known as the New York Draft Riots.