Happy Birthday, General Lee

You people with your misunderstanding.  Not the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard.  The real General Lee – the confederate general.  We’re talking real history here…
Yes, September 16th 2006 is General Custis Lee’s 174th birthday.  So hats off to a man who played a large part in the civil war.  Oh, and note this little bit:

The eldest son and the second of seven children, Custis Lee, as his family called him, followed his father’s footsteps to West Point. At age 16, Custis had been denied entry into the military academy, but his father wrote an appeal to General Winfield Scott and so he was admitted the following year. Though he had needed his father’s influence to gain admission, once in West Point Lee made the most of his opportunity. He graduated first in his class of 46 in 1854. For the last two years of his studies, his father was superintendent of the academy.

Like so many children of the rich these days, it appears he couldn’t make the cut on his own, so he got Daddy to fix things and let him get where he wanted to be.  Not that he didn’t do well after this, but he couldn’t even get into the military academy on his own.  Think how history might have changed had daddy not written that letter.

[tags]Happy Birthday, General Lee’s birthday[/tags]