The lawyer who literally wrote the legal terms for the end of the Civil War is finally a member of the New York State Bar, 130 years after his death | Fortune

"Ely Samuel Parker, a Seneca leader and Civil War officer who served in President Ulysses S. Grant's cabinet, was posthumously admitted Friday to the New York State Bar, an achievement denied him in life because he was Native American. His admission inside a ceremonial courtroom in Buffalo 130 years after his death followed a yearslong effort by his descendants, who saw bitter irony in the fact that an important figure in U.S. history was never seen as a U.S. citizen, then a requirement to practice law."

"'Today ... we correct that injustice,' Melissa Parker Leonard, a great-great-great-grandniece of Parker's, said to an audience that included robed judges from several New York courts. 'We acknowledge that the failure was never his. It was the law itself.' Parker was at Grant's side for Gen. Robert E. Lee's 1865 surrender at the Appomattox, Virginia, courthouse, where he was tasked with writing out the final terms that the generals signed."

"He is also the first Native American to be posthumously admitted to the bar, said retired Judge John Browning, who worked on the application. 'Even a cursory review of his biography will show that Mr. Parker was not only clearly qualified for admission to the bar, but he in fact exemplified the best and highest ideals of the legal profession that the bar represents,' Judge Gerald Whalen, the presiding justice of the 4th Appellate Division, said before finalizing the admission."

Ely Samuel Parker was a Seneca leader born in 1828 on the Tonawanda reservation and educated at a Baptist mission school where he used the name Ely Samuel Parker instead of Hasanoanda. He studied law in Ellicottville but was denied bar admission because only natural-born or naturalized citizens could be admitted. Parker served as a Civil War officer and as an aide to Ulysses S. Grant, drafting the final terms at Appomattox. Grant later appointed him commissioner of Indian Affairs, the first Native American in that role. Descendants secured his posthumous admission to the New York State Bar 130 years after his death, and judges praised his qualifications and legacy.

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