He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the Union army during the American Civil War at the Battle of Fort Huger.

Stevens and Philemon Beecher Van Trump made the first documented successful climb of Mount Rainier on August 17, 1870.

[4] After the war, Stevens returned to Washington to care for his widowed mother, initially working for the Oregon Steam Navigation Company and then as a federal revenue collector in 1868.

Stevens joined the bar in 1871, representing the Northern Pacific Railroad Company in their prosecution of lumber theft cases.

[2] In 1887 Stevens was admitted to the Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati by right of his descent from Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Lyman.

In 1918, while in frail health, he presided over the ceremonial placement of a memorial marker to Bureau of Indian Affairs agent Andrew Bolon in Klickitat County, Washington and, the following day, suffered a stroke of paralysis.