Celebrations, exhibitions, and media coverage of the sesquicentennial of the ending of the Civil War have concluded. The historic moments—Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860, the beginning of the war at Fort Sumter, the victory at Gettysburg, the Gettysburg Address, the Confederate surrender at Appomattox (April 9, 1865), and the assassination of Lincoln have been duly re-memorialized.

Now America confronts a more complex chapter, the murky years—1865–1877—of Reconstruction. There will be few triumphal observances for there was no happy ending. Instead, America will be exposed to reams of material blaming the South for our racial conundrum and speculating on the lost opportunity for equality. Nevertheless, all of the issues of Reconstruction circle back inexorably to one fact—the attitude of the white North towards blacks.

The scene at Appomattox, Virginia, is quite instructive for the future. The meeting of the two opposing combatants—Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Union General Ulysses S. Grant—is particularly noteworthy because of the current demonization of Confederate symbols, including statues of Lee. Lee and Grant were antagonists in a war that felled hundreds of thousands of soldiers, but the scene at Appomattox was anything but vengeful. Importantly, Grant would become president of the United States for eight years of the Reconstruction period.

Lee was immediately paroled. Despite the fact that Grant viewed the Confederate cause as immoral, his respect for the Confederate general was genuine. Grant wrote that his “own feelings were sad and depressed”:

I felt like anything rather than