He served as a brigadier general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

[3] When the Civil War started Beatty volunteered as a private in the 3rd Ohio Infantry, serving in western Virginia.

[1] He resigned his commission in January 1864 and re-entered the banking business.

[4] A 1909 biographer wrote that Beatty was then "the sole survivor of the electoral college of Ohio, which cast its vote for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and as far as known, the only surviving elector who cast a vote for President Lincoln when he was chosen to his first term almost a half century ago.

Beatty wrote The citizen-soldier, or, Memoirs of a volunteer, Cincinnati : Wilstach, Baldwin, 1879.