Rations were scarcely issued, and the men about preparing supper, when rumors that the enemy had been encountered that day near Gettysburg absorbed every other interest, and very soon orders came to march forthwith to Gettysburg.

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.