[1] After that, attended Wesleyan University where he stayed active in the anti-slavery movement, giving lectures and writing on the topic, for which he encountered stiff opposition and was mobbed repeatedly.

During his years at school, in addition to Thompson, he heard notable abolitionists speak such as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, Lucy Stone, and many others.

[3] After graduating from Wesleyan University, Rust became the principal of the New Hampshire Conference Seminary of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1846, today known as the Tilton School, where he made sure to impress his abolitionist values on all the students.

He helped found the Freedmen's Aid Society to give teachers from the North supplies and housing to teach freed slaves in the South.

[2] After the war, he helped set up the Freedmen's Bureau, an agency of the United States Department of War to "direct such issues of provisions, clothing, and fuel, as he may deem needful for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children.