found the pagan name "Tecumseh" unsuitable and instead named the child "William" after the saint on whose feast day the baptism took place. Sherman had already been baptized as an infant by a Presbyterian minister and recent biographers believe, contrary to Lewis's claims, that he was probably given the first name "William" at that time. As an adult, Sherman signed all his correspondence —including to his wife— "W. T. Sherman". His friends and family called him "Cump". Military training and service Senator Ewing secured an appointment for the 16-year-old Sherman as a cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point. Sherman roomed with and befriended another important future Civil War general for the Union, George H. Thomas. Sherman excelled academically at West Point, but he treated the demerit system with indifference. Fellow cadet William Rosecrans remembered Sherman as "one of the brightest and most popular fellows" at the academy and as "a bright-eyed, red-headed fellow, who was always prepared for a lark of any kind". About his time at West Point, Sherman says only the following in his Memoirs: Upon graduation in 1840, Sherman entered the army as a second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery and saw action in Florida in the Second Seminole War. In his memoirs he noted that "it was a great pity to remove the Seminoles at all," as Florida "was the Indian's paradise" and still had (at the time that Sherman wrote his memoirs in the 1870s) "a population less than should make a good State." Sherman was later stationed in Georgia and South Carolina. As the foster son of a prominent Whig politician, in Charleston the popular Lieutenant Sherman moved within the upper circles of Old South society. While many of his colleagues saw action in the Mexican–American War, Sherman was assigned to administrative duties in the captured territory of California. Along with fellow Lieutenants Henry Halleck and Edward Ord, Sherman embarked from New York City on the 198-day journey around Cape Horn, aboard the converted sloop USS Lexington. During that voyage, Sherman grew close to Ord and especially to the intellectually distinguished Halleck. In his memoirs, Sherman relates a hike with Halleck to the summit of Corcovado, overlooking Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, in order to examine the city's aqueduct design. Sherman and Ord disembarked in Monterey, California on January 28, 1847, two days before the town of Yerba Buena