On April 9th 1865 General Robert E. Lee and General Ulysses S. Grant sat down for the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. It was the moment that would mark the end of the Civil War. During the war many tribes of Native Americans fought alongside the Confederates, hoping that the war would bring peace to them and secure their lands. The irony was that Lieutenant Colonel Ely S. Parker, a Native American, would be the one to create the articles of surrender.
Born in 1828 in New York, Parker was a member of the Seneca Tribe. He worked as an engineer, and at the onset of the war Parker attempted to raise a regiment of Iroquois volunteers to fight, but was rejected by Edwin D. Morgan, the governor of New York. Then Parker attempted to join the Union Army but was told he could not because he was an Indian. Finally Parker contacted his colleague and friend Ulysses S. Grant and Parker was commissioned a captain on May 1863. Eventually he would rise in the ranks to become lieutenant colonel and Grant's military secretary. It is in this role that he was instrumental in creating the document that would begin the end of the Confederacy. The actual document is in Parker's handwriting.
At the signing Robert E. Lee remarked, "I am glad to see one real American here,"
to which Parker replied, "We are all Americans."
-Professor Walter
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