A Sandburg Stumper

[Rob Wick]

You nailed it Roger! It is West Point. I came across this in an article in the September 1, 1970 edition of the Frederick News in Frederick, Md. The story was actually about when Sandburg met Edgar Lee Masters. According to the article,

In May, 1899, Congressman George Washington Prince notified
the captain of Company C of the Sixth Illinois Infantry, which had
been mustered out, that he could appoint one of the members of the
company to the United States Military Academy. The officers
offered the appointment to Carl Sandburg, and on the 12th of May he
got a letter from tne War Department notifying him that he had been
appointed "conditionally."
Sandburg went up to West Point in June and took the entrance
examination there. If he had passed the examination, he would have
been in the same class with Douglas MacArthur, who had taken the
entrance examination in the City Hall in Milwaukee, and enrolled at
WestPoint "unconditionally" on June 13,1899.
But Sandburg flunked arithmetic and grammar and so remained
at West Point only two weeks.

This is the first I've heard of this, although it has been a few years since I read Penelope Nivens' biography.

Roger, as a special Sandburg Stumper prize, you are hereby awarded an opportunity to take the entrance exam to get into the Cubs' organization. Good luck!

Best
Rob