time in a San Francisco gripped by the frenzy of real estate speculation: "I can handle a hundred thousand men in battle, and take the City of the Sun, but am afraid to manage a lot in the swamp of San Francisco." The failure of Page, Bacon & Co. triggered a panic surrounding the "Black Friday" of February 23, 1855, leading to the closure of several of San Francisco's principal banks and many other businesses. Sherman, however, succeeded in keeping his own bank solvent. In 1856, during the vigilante period, he served briefly as a major general of the California militia. Sherman's San Francisco branch closed in May 1857, and he relocated to New York City on behalf of the same bank, travelling on the steamer SS Central America. When the bank failed during the Panic of 1857, he closed the New York branch. In early 1858, he returned to California to finalize the bank's outstanding accounts there. Later in 1858, he moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, where he worked as the office manager of the law firm established by his brothers-in-law Hugh Ewing and Thomas Ewing Jr. Sherman obtained a license to practice law, despite not having studied for the bar, but he met with little success as a lawyer. Military college superintendent In 1859, Sherman accepted a job as the first superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy in Pineville, Louisiana, a position he sought at the suggestion of Major Don Carlos Buell and obtained through the support of General George Mason Graham. Sherman was an effective and popular leader of the institution, which would later become Louisiana State University. Colonel Joseph P. Taylor, brother of the late President Zachary Taylor, declared that "if you had hunted the whole Army, from one end of it to the other, you could not have found a man in it more admirably suited for the position in every respect than Sherman." Sherman's younger brother John was, from his seat in the U.S. Congress, a prominent advocate against slavery. Before the Civil War, however, the more conservative William T. had expressed some sympathy for the white Southerners' defense of their traditional agrarian system, including the institution of slavery. On the other hand, he was adamantly opposed to the secession of the southern states. In Louisiana, he became a close friend of professor David French Boyd, a native of Virginia