Following the outbreak of the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers, he enlisted in his hometown in the 104th Ohio Infantry on August 4, 1862.

The regiment moved to Covington, Kentucky, on September 1, 1862, in preparation for the Defense of Cincinnati against a threatened Confederate invasion by troops under Edmund Kirby Smith.

He captured a Confederate flag from the division of Patrick Cleburne during the fighting at Franklin in November; he was awarded the Medal of Honor a few months later.

He married Stella Woodward (1847–1925) of Kent on April 15, 1874, and raised two children, Anna M Hall Woodworth (1877–1925) and Helen A.

In 1881, he and his family moved to Kent, Ohio, and Hall embarked on a career as a businessman, holding an interest in a planing mill and a lumberyard in nearby Boardman.