But the cause for which we fought was higher; our thought wider... That thought was our power.

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.