 After graduation, he was an instructor at Williamstown Academy, and later at Barhamville Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina.In 1841, he published the first compilation of the botany of the southern United States in his "A manual of botany", a companion work to Amos Eaton's "Manual of Botany for the Northern States".He was named professor of natural sciences at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia in 1842.