He became minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Augusta, and the family lived there until 1870. After the end of the Civil War, Wilson began attending a nearby school, where classmates included future Supreme Court Justice Joseph Rucker Lamar and future ambassador Pleasant A. Stovall. In February 1890, with the help of friends, Wilson was elected by the Princeton University Board of Trustees to the Chair of Jurisprudence and Political Economy, at an annual salary of $3,000 (equivalent to $85,367 in 2019). He quickly gained a reputation as a compelling speaker; one student described him as 'the greatest class-room lecturer I ever have heard.' During his time as a professor at Princeton, he also delivered a series of lectures at Johns Hopkins, New York Law School, and Colorado College.