This is the great reward of service, to live, far out and on, in the life of others; this is the mystery of Christ, - to give life's best for such high sake that it shall be found again unto life eternal.

Of his desire to serve in the War he wrote to Maine's Governor Israel Washburn Jr. Gen. He would break his own record in 1868.

He served on the faculty and as president of his alma mater Bowdoin College. After the war he entered politics as a Republican and served four one-year terms of office as the 32nd Governor of Maine.