<v Speaker 1>The Civil War in America came to its official end

<v Speaker 1>in a small room in Virginia. It was April 9, 1865,

<v Speaker 1>in a quiet parlor in a private home in a

<v Speaker 1>little village called Appomattox Courthouse. Now, you know the men

<v Speaker 1>who were there. There was Robert E. Lee in his

<v Speaker 1>immaculate dress uniform, sword at his side. And there was

<v Speaker 1>Ulysses S. Grant in a mud-splattered private's coat with his

<v Speaker 1>general stars pinned on because his good uniform hadn't arrived

<v Speaker 1>in time for the ceremony. These two men had come

<v Speaker 1>together to put an end to four years of bloodshed.

<v Speaker 1>But there was a third man in that room. He

<v Speaker 1>sat at a small table holding a pen. Because when

<v Speaker 1>the terms of surrender were finally agreed upon, when Grant

<v Speaker 1>scrawled out his generous conditions and needed a clean final

<v Speaker 1>copy written by a steady hand, it was that third

<v Speaker 1>man who wrote it. He was Grant's military secretary, a

<v Speaker 1>lieutenant colonel. and one of the most capable men in

<v Speaker 1>that army. He was also, in the eyes of the

<v Speaker 1>government that he served, not a citizen of the United States,

<v Speaker 1>or any country for that matter, because he was a

<v Speaker 1>Seneca Indian, and his name was Eli Parker. I'm Jerry Broadway,

<v Speaker 1>and from Haydad Productions, this is Anonymous America. Eli was

<v Speaker 1>born on a reservation in western New York and was

<v Speaker 1>given the name Hassanawanda as a boy. He mastered the

<v Speaker 1>English language and set out to become a lawyer. He

<v Speaker 1>read the law. He apprenticed. He did everything a young

<v Speaker 1>aspiring attorney-to-be was supposed to do. But when he went

<v Speaker 1>to be admitted to the bar, they turned him away.

<v Speaker 1>Not because he failed the examination. He was told that

<v Speaker 1>only citizens of the United States could be attorneys, and

<v Speaker 1>Native Americans were not citizens. Believe it or not, the

<v Speaker 1>law did not recognize him as belonging to the nation

<v Speaker 1>he was born in. So Eli changed course. If he

<v Speaker 1>couldn't practice law, he built things. He became a civil engineer.

<v Speaker 1>He worked on the great canals of New York and

<v Speaker 1>on government buildings all around the country. And it was

<v Speaker 1>on one of those projects in Galena, Illinois, that he

<v Speaker 1>befriended a quiet, unlucky store clerk, a former army officer

<v Speaker 1>who had resigned in disgrace and couldn't seem to find

<v Speaker 1>his footing in life, a man named U.S. Grant. And

<v Speaker 1>then came the war. Eli wanted to serve. He tried

<v Speaker 1>to raise a regiment of Iroquois men to fight for

<v Speaker 1>the Union. The Union refused the help. He tried to

<v Speaker 1>join the Army Corps of Engineers. After all, he was

<v Speaker 1>one of the finest engineers in the country. He was

<v Speaker 1>refused there too. He was basically told that this was

<v Speaker 1>a white man's war and it wasn't his fight. Now

<v Speaker 1>here's a man almost begging to serve. A man who

<v Speaker 1>was denied the vote, denied the bar, and denied a uniform.

<v Speaker 1>Being told the war to decide the future of the

<v Speaker 1>country was really none of his concern. But his old

<v Speaker 1>friend Grant remembered him. And when Grant's star began to rise,

<v Speaker 1>he sent for Parker. He made him an officer. First,

<v Speaker 1>he made him his adjutant. and then his military secretary,

<v Speaker 1>one of the men closest to him in the entire army.

<v Speaker 1>Eli was at Grant's side through the hardest fighting of

<v Speaker 1>the war and all the way to that parlor in

<v Speaker 1>Appomattox Courthouse. And so we come back to that little parlor.

<v Speaker 1>The terms are written. Lee reads them and agrees. And

<v Speaker 1>as the formalities unfold, General Lee looks around at the

<v Speaker 1>Union officers gathered there and his eyes settle on Eli Parker,

<v Speaker 1>on his dark complexion and his features. And for just

<v Speaker 1>a moment, those who were in the room say that

<v Speaker 1>Lee seemed to just study Eli, not quite certain what

<v Speaker 1>he was looking at. And then Robert E. Lee walked

<v Speaker 1>over to Eli, extended his hand, and said, I am

<v Speaker 1>glad to see one real American here. And Eli Parker

<v Speaker 1>took his hand and said, Sir, we are all Americans.

<v Speaker 1>We are all Americans, spoken by a man his own

<v Speaker 1>government wouldn't call a citizen, spoken to a defeated general

<v Speaker 1>in the room where the Union was saved by the

<v Speaker 1>Indian who wrote out the peace accord with his own hand.

<v Speaker 1>But Eli's story doesn't quite end happily. Grant became president

<v Speaker 1>and he appointed Eli Parker to be the Commissioner of

<v Speaker 1>Indian Affairs, the first Native American ever to hold that office,

<v Speaker 1>now responsible for his own people. Eli tried to reform

<v Speaker 1>a corrupt system and for his trouble, he was accused

<v Speaker 1>of fraud by the very men whose graft he threatened.

<v Speaker 1>He was investigated and he was cleared, completely exonerated, but

<v Speaker 1>he was exhausted by the ordeal and he resigned. He

<v Speaker 1>later lost most of his money in bad speculations and

<v Speaker 1>spent his final working years in a modest clerk's job

<v Speaker 1>for the New York City Police Department. Eli died in 1895,

<v Speaker 1>largely forgotten. But he left us those four words, standing

<v Speaker 1>in the room where America decided once and for all

<v Speaker 1>what it wanted to be. A man the nation refused

<v Speaker 1>to claim looked into the face of that nation and

<v Speaker 1>told it the truth about itself. We are all Americans.

<v Speaker 1>Eli just knew it. long before the rest of the

<v Speaker 1>country was willing to admit it. That's Eli Parker, and

<v Speaker 1>that's Anonymous America.