The Seneca Man Who Wrote The Surrender Terms At Appomattox – Then Became America’s First Native Commissioner Of Indian Affairs

The meeting at Wilmer McLean’s house that afternoon had been arranged through an exchange of messages.

McLean himself was a civilian who had moved to the relative backwater of Appomattox Court House to escape the war — his previous home, near the Manassas battlefield, had been used as a Confederate headquarters during the first major engagement of the conflict.

The war had followed him to Appomattox, and history made him a footnote in two of its most significant chapters.

The room in which Grant and Lee met was the parlor of McLean’s house.