[2] At the first call for troops in the Civil War, Gilchrist enlisted as a Captain in the 2nd New Jersey Regiment, serving from 1861 to 1865.
[2] In 1869, Gilchrist was nominated by Governor Theodore Fitz Randolph as Attorney General.
In 1873, Governor Joel Parker appointed him to a commission assigned to revise the New Jersey State Constitution.
[3] After serving as Attorney General, Gilchrist returned to private practice in Jersey City.
He married late in life to Fredericka Raymond Beardsley, who wrote The True Story of Hamlet and Ophelia (1889).