He became a printer, and in 1830 the editor of the Goshen Independent Republican, a Jacksonian newspaper.
In 1856, he joined the Republican Party, and was a presidential elector, voting for John C. Frémont and William L. Dayton.
In 1865, he was appointed by Abraham Lincoln as Assistant United States Treasurer in New York.
In 1869, he became President of the New York and Boston Railroad, and in 1883 of the American Safe Deposit Company.
He died from kidney disease at his residence at 5 Spencer Place, in Brooklyn, and was buried at the Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands, New York.