We Gather Together by Denise Kiernan

Author:Denise Kiernan [Kiernan, Denise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

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Losses and blockades had taken their toll early in 1865, and more and more Confederate troops had begun deserting. Though not yet ratified, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution had passed the Senate in April 1864 and the House on January 31, 1865; Senate members represented states in the North; border states that did not leave the Union; and two new states, West Virginia and Nevada. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The amendment still needed to be ratified in order for it to go into effect. The prior spring, in March 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant had been appointed general in chief of the Army—the first person ever to hold that post in the United States—giving him command of the nation’s entire military.

Grant’s military secretary, Ely S. Parker, was a diplomat, engineer, attorney, and a citizen of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation. The pair had known each other since 1860, when Parker frequented a store run by Grant’s father and where Grant, who at that time had drunk himself temporarily out of his military career, was working. By 1863 and the Battle of Vicksburg, Grant had turned his life and career around. When Parker was denied the opportunity to enlist in the Union Army, he contacted Grant, who agreed to take him on personally. In April 1865, Richmond, capital of the Confederate States of America, fell. On April 9, 1865, in front of the Appomattox courthouse, generals Grant and Lee agreed upon the terms of Lee’s surrender. Ely Parker wrote those terms.

At the close of the Civil War, the estimation of the death toll exceeded six hundred thousand souls. About twenty thousand each Hispanic and Indigenous peoples fought in Union and Confederate armies. In places like North Carolina and Virginia, members of the Pamunkey and Lumbee tribes served as naval pilots and guerrillas. Pequot fought in the 31st U.S. Colored Infantry, while Company K of the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters comprised Delaware, Huron, Oneida, Potawatomi, Ojibwa, and Ottawa. An estimated 198,000 Black men served in the U.S. Army and Navy, with roughly 40,000 of them losing their lives. And some who fought defied many challenges and prejudices, namely Harriet Tubman, who nursed, scouted, and spied in the South.

The country, including its beleaguered president, was anxious to move in a more peaceful direction, though the path and the scope of the reconstruction seemed unclear. Everyone wanted a chance to exhale, be with those who were home safe, mourn those who never would return.

Shortly after Lee’s surrender, on April 11, Lincoln gave an address from the balcony of the executive mansion. Lately the president had been uneasy, troubled by disturbing dreams. He was subdued. The gathered crowd was not. Cheers erupted at the sight of him.

“We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart,” he began. He acknowledged the road ahead was “fraught with great difficulty.

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