Hoping to become a successful physician, he began a medical practice with classmate Dr. Bailey in Springfield, Massachusetts. While trying to establish the practice, he wrote for periodicals such as "Knickerbocker Magazine" and even tried to publish a newspaper, "The Bay State Weekly Courier", but the attempt proved unsuccessful, as did his medical practice. In 1845 he married Elizabeth Luna Chapin. After giving up medicine in 1848, he left western Massachusetts and took a teaching position in Richmond, Virginia, followed by one in 1849 in Vicksburg, Mississippi.