Until late in the war Goldsborough performed administrative duties in Washington but without being allowed any role in major decision making. [Navy Secretary Gideon] Welles had a poor opinion of Goldsborough, regarding him as "inefficient" with "no hard courage." Repeated requests for active command were denied Goldsborough on the basis that he could not be spared from his administrative duties.

Hay did not find academic life at Brown stimulating but was attracted to the literary circles of Providence and found it difficult to return to the Illinois prairie, where he read law with an uncle in Springfield and was admitted to the bar in 1860. He took a small part in the presidential campaign of Abraham Lincoln and went to Washington as one of Lincoln's personal secretaries. Technically he was a Pension Office clerk. In 1864 he was commissioned as a major and assistant adjutant general in the volunteers.

The Nicolay-[John] Hay biography has had lasting historical significance. Both Hay and Nicolay were partisan Republicans, writing under the watchful eye of the martyred president's son in a period when the ideal of historical objectivity had yet to be fully established.