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Show Curiosa Americana By Elmo Scott Watson Gen. Lee, U. S. Ai; Gen. Grant, C. S. A.! EN. ROBERT E. LEE, com-aiander com-aiander in chief of the Union Un-ion armies ; Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, commander In chief of the Confederate Confed-erate armies." Sounds all wrong, doesn't It? But It might have turned out that way ! Most of us know that, before Virginia Vir-ginia seceded from the Union Lee was offered command of the Union army, which he declined. But It Is not so well known that Grant also received a similar offer from the Confederacy. But Grant's own words are our evidence for that fact. Years later when he was President he offered Robert Martin Douglas, the son of Stephen A. Douglas, a government position. At that time he declared: "I was about to accept a Confeder ate commission when your father dissuaded me. All my career I owe to him and nothing is loo good for his son." It would not have been so unusual un-usual If he had accepted the commission, com-mission, for at the time he was an ex-officer of the United States army, a Democrat and married to a Missouri Mis-souri woman who owned slaves all sufficiently good reasons for his entering the service of the South. If he had and if Lee had accepted Lincoln's oiler, how different the outcome of the war might have been : There tnlsht have been no Appomattox, hut if there had been the historic rules might have been reversed, making Lee the victor and Grart the vanquished! S W-i-':i Union. |