Barnes' political and financial interests intersected in the plan to extend the Watertown & Madison Railroad to the Mississippi River.
This ambitious plan was wrecked by the Panic of 1857, which led to the failure of the Watertown & Madison Railroad and Barnes' financial ruin.
He was at Troy, New York, at the outbreak of the American Civil War, and volunteered for service in the Union Army.
[3] Sixty years after his death, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to upgrade him to an honorable discharge.
His maternal ancestors traced their lineage back to Thomas Topping, who represented Wethersfield in the Connecticut General Court in the 1630s and was a signatory of the Hempstead Convention in 1665.