For the following six years Captain Dana was engaged in the banking business at Saint Paul, Minnesota. He had married Sue Lewis Martin Sandford, June 11, 1844, and they have had three children, (none of whom are now living). On the outbreak of the Civil war in 1861, he hastened to tender his services to the governor of Minnesota, and was at once commissioned colonel of the 1st regiment of Minnesota infantry, with which he served under McClellan in Virginia and in the Army of the Potomac until the battle of Antietam, where he was wounded. He had been promoted brigadier-general in February, 1862; and in the following November he was made major-general. In the later years of the war General Dana served as commander of the 16th corps and of the Department of the Mississippi.
The war ended, he engaged in mining business in the West, and was agent of the American Russian Commercial Company in Alaska and Washington, 1866-71; afterward, until 1888, he was concerned in the management of several railroads in the middle West. Since 1888 he has lived a retired life, though in 1898, at the age of seventy-four, he offered his services to the Government to take part in the Spanish war.
General Dana is a member of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion. His religious affiliation is with the Protestant Episcopal church. Politically he is a Democrat, though he was a Republican during the stress of the Civil war. Although his own career has been a somewhat varied one, his advice to the young is that those who would succeed in life can best do so by "sticking to any calling that offers reasonable promise of success."
