ise aid him in
making himself a master in commerce.

Then one day in 1863, when he had satisfied himself that the fortunes of
war were definitely turning and that in the end the Union cause was
destined to triumph, he made a change.

He resigned his clerkship. He recalled his money from Canada, and
considerably increased at least its nominal amount by converting the
gold into greatly depreciated greenbacks.

With this capital he opened a commission and forwarding house at Cairo,
together with a coal yard, a bank, five wharf boats, half a dozen tugs,
an insurance office, a flour mill, and other things. He sent for his
brothers to act as his clerks and presently to become his partners.

From the beginning he made money rapidly, and from the beginning he was
eagerly on the lookout for opportunities, which in that time of rapid
change were abundant. He quickly secured control of nearly all the
commission and forwarding business that centered at Cairo. By
underbidding the government itself he presently had contracts for all
the vast government business of that character.

He was always ready to take up a collateral enterprise that promised
results. When the Mississippi River was reopened to commerce by the fall
of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, Captain Will Hallam was the first to see
and seize the opportunity. He bought everything he could lay his hands
on in the way of steamboats and barges, and sent them all upon trading
voyages--each under charge of a captain, but each directed by his own
masterful mind--up and down the Mississippi, and up and down the Ohio,
and up and down every navigable tributary of those great rivers.

This field was quickly made his own, so far as he cared to occupy it. If
a rival attempted a competition that might hurt his enterprises, Captain
Hallam quietly and quite without a ripple of anger in his voice,
dictated some letters to his secretary. Then freight rates suddenly fell
almost to the vanishing point, and after a disastrous trip or two, his
adversary's steamboats became his own by purchase at low prices, and
freight rates went up again. He bore no enmity to the men who thus
antagonized him in business and whom he thus conquered. His attitude
toward them was precisely that of a soldier toward his enemy. So long as
they antagonized him he fought them mercilessly; as soon as they fell
into his hands as wounded prisoners, he was ready and eager to do what
he could for them.

Those of them w