[1] When war came, Dame, aged 46, approached the recruit training station at Camp Union in Concord and offered her services to officers there.

[5] Dame served with the 2nd New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry as a matron from June 1861 to Christmas 1865 when the regiment was mustered out of service.

[8] Dame's nursing duties varied as well; sometimes she would oversee supplies, other times she would investigate the sanitary conditions of other regiments.

[1][10] At the Second Battle of Bull Run, Dame was taken as a prisoner but released because she cared for Union and Confederate soldiers indiscriminately.

[5] After the war, Dame was appointed by William E. Chandler to a Treasury Department clerkship in Washington, D.C.,[1] which she held for twenty-eight years until 1895.

[5][11] Dame served as the third president of the National Association of Army Nurses of the Civil War, upon the death of Dorothea Dix and resignation of Dr. Susan Ann Edson.