Grant trusted Parker’s precision and his penmanship.

The surrender document needed to be written accurately, clearly, and without error.

Parker was given that task because he was the right man for it, not as a statement about Native American history.

But what it meant in historical context was remarkable regardless of intent.

On one of the most significant days in American history — the day the bloodiest war in the nation’s existence effectively ended — the man who put the official terms of that ending into their final written form was a Seneca man who had been denied admission to the New York bar because his citizenship status was considered legally uncertain.

The encounter between Lee and Parker has been described in accounts written significantly after the fact, and historians treat the specific details — including the famous exchange about “real Americans” — with appropriate caution.