By Sarah Becker “Success in the Mexican War,” General Winfield Scott exclaimed, “was largely due to Robert E. Lee’s skill, valor and undaunted energy.” Robert E. Lee, the fifth child of Revolutionary War hero Henry “Light-horse Harry” Lee and his second wife Ann Hill Carter, was born January 19, 1807. Of noble descent, he spent his babyhood at Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County, Virginia. The family moved to Alexandria to escape financial reverses. Young Robert’s education included both the Alexandria Academy and Benjamin Hallowell’s school. Lee attended the latter briefly to study mathematics. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point because it was free. Lee’s decision to opt for a military career was sustained in part by his deceased father’s friendship with the Marquis de Lafayette, “an invaluable Revolutionary War ally.” In 1824 President James Monroe, also a Revolutionary War veteran, invited Lafayette to participate in a triumphal United States tour. General Lafayette, a Frenchman, arrived in New York in August 1824 and Robert E. Lee’s Alexandria Boyhood Home was among the acknowledged sites. “That [General Henry] Lee was a man of letters, a scholar who ripened under a truly classical sun, we have only to turn to his work on the southern war,” George Washington Parke Custis wrote, “his 1808 Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States.” Robert E. entered West Point in 1825; was listed as a “Distinguished Cadet,” and graduated second in his class in 1829. His rank: second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. His assignment: Georgia’s Ft. Pulaski. It was from Ft. Monroe that Lee courted his wife, Martha Washington’s great-granddaughter; George Washington Parke Custis’ daughter Mary Anna Randolph Custis. General George Washington died before Lee’s birth, but Robert E. valued his father and General Washington’s…