The Overland Campaign of 1864 — Grant’s sustained drive against Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, through the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and to the siege of Petersburg — was among the bloodiest sustained operations in American military history.

Parker was present through much of it, working on Grant’s staff as the casualty lists mounted and the strategic pressure intensified.

He was also something that the army had not quite figured out how to categorize.

He was a Seneca man in a Union uniform, serving on the staff of the commanding general, at a time when the country was fighting, ostensibly, for a vision of American identity that remained deeply contested about who exactly it included.

The soldiers and officers around him were generally respectful — Grant’s respect for Parker was evident, and it shaped how others on the staff related to him — but the larger question of what his presence meant was one that nobody in the army had a clear answer to.