At the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted in the 2nd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment but was discharged at Camp Randall "for injuries received" (presumably during training).
(He also briefly went absent without leave in order to smuggle the body of a fellow Fox Lake soldier back home for burial; then returned to his unit.
[2]) At Bull Run he was wounded in the hip and shoulder, and lost his hearing in the right ear, as a result of which he was discharged from the service in 1863.
He became a civilian employee of the Quartermaster Department in Washington, D.C., in 1864, and served at Fort Laramie during Red Cloud's War.
In 1873, he was elected to the 2nd Monroe County Assembly district as a member of the Liberal Reform Party (a recently formed coalition of Democrats, reform and Liberal Republicans, and Grangers which secured the election of one Governor of Wisconsin and a number of state legislators) for a one-year term.