He graduated from Yale College in 1846. He turned to preparation for the ministry immediately upon leaving college. After three years in the Auburn Theological Seminary, in 1850 he visited Missouri, laboring for a few weeks in St. Louis as a city missionary, and for some months with the Presbyterian Church in Weston. Toward the end of the same year he was ordained pastor of this church. His location, on the western border of the state, but four miles from Fort Leavenworth, exposed him to the agitation concerning the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the Kansas Border War. Finally, after varied persecution, his declared conviction that slavery was morally wrong obliged him to leave the town in the Spring of 1855 to avoid violence.