later, "a Sunday-school cadet," his record for behavior being 124 in
the Academy standard--not so very far from the foot. But Grant, it
must be remembered, ranked even lower in his behavior record, standing
at 149.

The twenty years that followed Sherman's graduation from West Point
were variously spent. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the
Third Artillery, July 1, 1840, and ordered to Florida to face the
hostile Seminoles. He was promoted to be first lieutenant November 30,
1841, and in 1842 was ordered to Fort Morgan, in Alabama. From 1843 to
1846 he was stationed at Fort Moultrie, in Charleston Harbor (where
the afterward famous Major Robert Anderson was his superior officer),
at Bellefontaine, Alabama, and at Pittsburg, in Pennsylvania, on
recruiting service. When the war with Mexico was declared, Lieutenant
Sherman was sent to California, then a debatable land. He reached
Monterey Bay, by way of "the Horn," in January, 1847, and spent three
years in California, returning east as bearer of despatches to the War
Department in 1850. In May, 1850, he married Miss Ellen Ewing,
daughter of Senator Ewing, then Secretary of the Interior under
President Taylor, and in September following he was commissioned as
captain and sent to St. Louis.

It was at this time, so Sherman notes in his "Memoirs," that he felt a
great disappointment to think that the war with Mexico was fought to a
finish without his having been "in it," and he adds, "of course, I
thought it was the last and only chance in my day, and that my career
as a soldier was at an end." It was at an end for a time, for after
garrison duty at St. Louis and New Orleans, he resigned from the army,
and, in 1853, sought to make his fortune in business.

He first went to California as manager of the San Francisco branch of
a St. Louis bank, but the ill success of the enterprise drove him east
again in 1857, when he engaged in the banking business in New York
City. To this enterprise, however, the famous panic of 1857 put an
early end, and in 1858 he was embarked in the law, with an office at
Leavenworth, Kan. This, too, failing to supply sufficient bread and
butter, he tried farming in Ohio for a while, and then applied for a
government position in Washington. Instead of this, however, he
secured an appointment as Superintendent and Professor of Engineering
in a new military college just started at Alexandria, in Louisiana. He
entered upon the duties of his po