During his Civil War service he fought in several major battles including Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.

It was during the Battle of Fredericksburg that his actions would earn him the United States military's highest decoration for valor, the Medal of Honor.

[3] Adams enlisted as a Private in Major Benjamin Perley Poore's Rifle Battalion, a unit that was later folded into the 19th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment.

[6] While serving as a Second Lieutenant in Company I, he was one of 18 Union soldiers who received the Medal of Honor for valor at the Battle of Fredericksburg.

Adams recovered the regimental and national colors as a corporal and a lieutenant carrying them fell mortally wounded.

He and the entire regiment were captured near Cold Harbor on June 22, 1864, and Adams was held at Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia.

He was also imprisoned at Macon, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, where he and other officers were placed on Morris Island in an attempt to stop naval bombardment by the Union.

[7] After the war, Adams was a foreman for ten years at the B. F. Doak & Company shoe factory in Lynn, Massachusetts.

He left that post to become an inspector in the Boston Custom House and later served as the Postmaster of Lynn and Deputy Warden of the State Reformatory at Concord.