During the Civil War, he was correspondent for the "New York Tribune" (with the Army of the Potomac, 1862–63) and was at the front as the representative of a news agency established by him in that year at Washington (1864). Out of his experiences reporting the Civil War, he became a confirmed pacifist. In 1865, when Horace White became managing editor of the "Chicago Tribune", Villard became its Washington correspondent. In 1866, he was the correspondent of that paper in the Prusso-Austrian War. He stayed on in Europe in 1867 to report on the Paris Exposition.