He moved into his new store in 1846, and continued to expand and enlarge his business every year. Some years ago he purchased the old Ninth-Street Dutch Church and the lots adjacent to it, comprising the entire block lying between Ninth and Tenth Streets, Broadway and Fourth Avenue. When he found the retail trade going up town, and deserting its old haunts below Canal Street, he erected a fine iron building at the corner of Broadway and Tenth Street, to which he removed the retail department of his business, continuing his wholesale trade at his old store on Chambers Street. This new "upper store" has increased with the business. The building now covers the entire block upon which it is erected, and is the largest, most complete, and magnificent establishment of its kind in the world. Though he took no active part in politics, he was too much interested in public affairs, by reason of his immense wealth, not to watch them closely. He was satisfied, some time before our late troubles began, that war must come, and quietly made contracts with nearly all the manufacturers for all their productions for a considerable period of time. Accordingly, when the war did come, it was found that nearly all the articles of clothing, blankets, etc., needed for the army had been monopolized by him. His profits on these transactions amounted to many millions of dollars, though it should be remarked that his dealings with the Government were characterized by an unusual degree of liberality. The gains thus realized by him more than counterbalanced the losses he sustained by the sudden cessation of his Southern trade. Fifty years have now passed away since the young school-teacher landed in New York, and he stands to-day at the head of the mercantile interests of the New World. In the half-century which has elapsed since then, he has won a fortune which is variously estimated at from twenty-five to forty millions of dollars. He has gained all this wealth fairly, not by trickery and deceit, or even by a questionable honesty, but by a series of mercantile transactions the minutest of which bears the impress of his sterling integrity, and by a patience, energy, tact, and genius of which few men are possessed. Surely, then, it must be a proud thought to him that he has done all this _himself_, by his own unaided efforts, and that amid all his wonderful success there does not rest one single stain upon his good name as a man or a merchant.