Trivial Trivia - taking trivia to new levels

[David Lockmiller]

(10-22-2020 03:42 PM)AussieMick Wrote:  Ely S. Parker was a Tonawanda Seneca Indian. He wrote , according to Wikipedia, the terms of surrender and Robert E Lee shook his hand saying You're the only American here.

This Wikipedia entry does not appear to jive with the description by then lieutenant colonel Horace Porter, LL.D., aide-de-camp to General Ulysses S. Grant, of the meeting of Ely S. Parker and General Robert E. Lee on that day of surrender for General Lee’s army.

In Campaigning With Grant, (1897), in the chapter titled “Conducting the Surrender,” at page 481, this meeting of the two men is described:

While the letters were being copied, General Grant introduced the general officers who had entered, and each member of the staff, to General Lee. The general shook hands with General Seth Williams, who had been his adjutant when Lee was superintendent at West Point some years before the war, and gave his hand to some of the other officers who had extended theirs; but to most of those who were introduced he merely bowed in a dignified and formal manner. He did not exhibit the slightest change of features during this ceremony until Colonel Parker of our staff was presented to him. Parker was a full-blooded Indian, when Lee saw his swarthy features he looked at him with evident surprise, and his eyes rested on him for several seconds. What was passing in his mind no one knew, but the natural surmise was that he at first mistook Parker for a negro, and was struck with astonishment to find that the commander of the Union armies had one of that race on his personal staff. Lee did not utter a word while the introductions were going on, except to Seth Williams, with whom he talked cordially.