A trained military engineer and high graduate of West Point, he served mostly as an infantry officer in the Union Army, fighting within the Eastern Theater during the American Civil War.

During the last year and a half of his West Point studies and the first six months of his Civil War service, Arthur Dutton carried on a nearly two-year long torrid letter writing campaign between himself and the woman who’s words in national magazines he fell in love with: noted and popular poet/author Hattie Tyng Hattie Tyng Griswold of Wisconsin.

Dutton’s high class placement from West Point allowed him to enter the prestigious U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and he was appointed as brevet second lieutenant the same day he graduated.

Dutton then began exercising brigade command in the IX Corps in February, and he was promoted to First Lieutenant in the Regular Army on March 3.

There Dutton led a brigade of the VII Corps, and for his actions during the efforts to hold Suffolk he was brevetted a lieutenant colonel in the Regular Army on March 3.

Bold and chivalrous, with a nice sense of honor, a judgment quick and decisive, an unwavering zeal in his chosen profession, he was in every respect a thorough soldier.

By his companions in arms he will never be forgotten, and to them his last resting place will be as a shrine commemorating the friendships which not the rude shock of war, nor lapse of time, can blight or destroy.