Speaking of his military experiences, David M. Potter told the New Haven Colony Historical Society that, "Although opposed to slavery and inclined to mock at the extravagances of Southern chivalry, DeForest found Southern society distinctly attractive."
    He did not enlist when the war broke out, expecting it to be a short conflict. But when the Union defeat was a disaster at Bull Run, DeForest decided to become a soldier.
    "For three years DeForest served as a line officer in campaigns, first in Louisiana, and then in the Shenandoah Valley under Sheriden. In 1864 he was mustered out in shattered health and returned to New Haven, but the military life could not have been very unpleasant to him, for after four months he was reinstated in the Invalid Corps, or Veteran Reserve Corps as it was later called. For over a year this assignment kept him in Washington, and then in July, 1866, he was transferred to the Freedmen's Bureau, which retained him in Washington two months longer and then sent him as a Bureau major to Greenville, South Carolina, where he served for fifteen months before finally being returned to civilian life in 1868.
    "He was at this time only forty-two; thirty-eight years still remained for him; but in fact he had now accumulated all of his literary capital. His best writing was all to grow out of the experiences up to this time. His writings on the war, on corruption in Washington, and on society in the South were the ones that retain vitality today, and all of these sprang from his personal observations as a line officer, as a uniformed clerk in the War Department, or as a Bureau major in the Carolina Piedmont.," stated Potter.
    His writing concerning the Civil War were much admired by literary critics, but not popular with general readers. He is considered by many to have been a forerunner of Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage.
    DeForest was a capable satirist, and the city of New Haven and Connecticut Yankee ways did not escape his pen. His novel Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty depicts a Louisiana doctor who goes north when he refuses to support the Confederate cause. However, his daughter remains loyal to the South. They move to New Boston (obviously New Haven), where the southern girl is wooed by