With the onset of the Civil War, the Nation was calling for help in the army.

Samuel Alexander, a junior at the time, entered the Union Army and became the school's first student ever to go to war.

The entire graduating senior class of 1861, the college's first graduating class, enlisted in the army. The students were:
A.F. Allen - became a farmer
A. Bayley - became a farmer
L.V. Beebe - became an insurance agent
H.D. Benham - died while in the army
G.A. Dickey - killed in the Battle of Gettysburg
C.E. Hollister - became a farmer
A.N. Prentiss - became a professor of botany at Cornell University and would later join M.A.C. faculty.

Source: The Spirit of Michigan State, J. Bruce McCristal