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Obscure history
While trying to research a reference in the 14th Amendment's leg history (the same Congress passed a bill to disband the southern militia structure, a Senator asked what power Congress had to do that, and another Senator said that Jeff Davis had before the war said that the militia was part of they army), I found reference to an interesting historical event.
It seems that in 1833, toward the end of the Black Hawk War, Lt. Jefferson Davis was sent to muster into service some Illinois volunteers, and he gave their leader the oath of allegience.
Thus it came about that Jefferson Davis gave Abraham Lincoln his first oath of office...
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There are lots of these during the Civil War. In 1862, General Grant demanded the unconditional surrender of Fort Donelson. The Confederate general who surrendered it was an old West Point classmate, Simon Bolivar Buckner of Kentucky. Buckner had lent Grant trainfare to get home after Grant dropped out of West Point.
Feelings were hard between the two men--Buckner had been commander of the Kentucky militia at the start of the war, and had tried very hard to persuade Kentucky's government to remain neutral. When Kentucky's legislature ordered all militia officers to take a loyalty oath, Buckner went to the South, with a fair number of other Kentuckians.
After the war, the hard feelings apparently softened, and Grant asked for Buckner to be one of his pallbearers.
I read somewhere that one of the farmers in the neighborhood of First Manassas was so undone by the battle that he packed up his family to move to the boonies where the war wouldn't bother him any more. Found a nice place down south of Richmond - at Appomattox Court House. The war in the East ended in his parlor.
Whoa, David. "Jefferson Davis gave Abraham Lincoln his first oath of office." Talk about strange historical occurances.