Silas C. Doolittle was born on August 14, 1843, in Butler, New York, to Loren Doolittle and Phebe Worth. His father was a lawyer who owned $550 of personal property in 1860. Doolittle grew up and attended school in Wolcott, New York, and by 1860, he was working as a farmer.
He enlisted in the Union army on September 21, 1861, and mustered in as a private in Company H of the 75th New York Infantry on November 26. According to his service records, he was 5 feet, 6 inches tall, with light hair and light eyes. The regiment spent most of the war stationed in Alabama and Mississippi. The army transferred the men to Virginia in 1864, and they took part in the Third Battle of Winchester, the Battle of Fisher’s Hill, and the Battle of Cedar Creek. He voted for Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1864, explaining that, “as long as I am trying to put down Treason in the field, I cannot countenance it at the Polls.”
He later declared that he “want[ed] to see those southern traitors humbled like dogs and then banished from the country as being too false to live among civilized people.” He fiercely opposed African American enlistment, insisting in March 1865 that “it is an insult to U.S. soldiers to put the uniform on Orang-ou-tangs.” He became a regimental musician on November 19, 1864, and he mustered out in Savannah, Georgia, on August 31, 1865.
Doolittle moved to Michigan after the war, and he married Julia M. Foster on January 12, 1867. They had at least four children: Frank, born around 1868; Elsie, born around 1870; Loren, born around 1875; and Carrie, born around 1880. By 1870, he was working as a mason in Dowagiac, Michigan, and he owned $800 of real estate and $500 of personal property. He applied for a federal pension in February 1893 and eventually secured one. They moved to Wayne, Michigan, in the early 1900s, and he died there on April 22, 1911.