After graduation from Yale in 1840, he taught in New Hampshire for a year, and then migrated to South Carolina, where he continued teaching and began the study of law.
Acquaintance with slavery operated to prevent his remaining in the South, and in 1846 he turned westwards and on arriving in northeastern Iowa, settled in Garnavillo, where in a short time he acquired a good practice as a lawyer.
These eight years of service were followed, in 1870, by an appointment to the Chief Justiceship of the Supreme Court; but he retained this office for a short time only, other interests claiming his entire attention.
At this period he originated the plan of a railway from Dubuque to St. Paul, and was connected with that enterprise through its earlier stages, until he started another effort, for a narrow gauge road across Iowa to the Missouri River.
He had already sold his Garnavillo farm, and had made a new home for himself on a large estate in Grand Meadow township in the northwestern part of the same county, which was now placed in jeopardy.