Whether he would have viewed it as vindication or as too little too late or as simply the belated recognition of what should always have been obvious is something the historical record does not allow us to know.

The Appomattox He Did Not Talk Much About

One of the more curious aspects of Parker’s later life is that he did not apparently spend much time publicly emphasizing his role at Appomattox.

This is notable because the surrender at Appomattox was, by the time Parker reached his fifties and sixties, one of the most celebrated events in American memory — the moment the Lost Cause mythology was already beginning to construct as noble defeat, and the moment Union veterans remembered as the culmination of everything they had sacrificed.

Parker had been there.