The historian Paula Baker described him as "perhaps the northern equivalent of South Carolina's Mary Chesnut: quotable, opinionated, and a careful follower of events."

He served with distinction on the United States Sanitary Commission during the Civil War, but never occupied any significant civic positions and had no special influence.

Estranged from his father at an early age, the younger Strong moved to Switzerland in the late nineteenth century and did most of his work while living in Europe, but he is nevertheless generally considered to be an American artist.

In addition, he helped to start the Union League Club of New York, an organization which pledged to "cultivate a profound national devotion."

He avoided military service by taking advantage of that section of the Enrollment Act of 1863 allowing draftees to pay $300 to a substitute who served for them.

This amount, a healthy sum in 1863, did not long remain the norm, for George Templeton Strong, pluckier than many of his contemporaries, paid a "big 'Dutch' boy of about twenty" $1,100 to be his "alter ego" in 1864.