Some of the young men made old by the war still tramped the roads of the South, going home to poverty and a land wasted by hunger and the fires of conquering battalions. Some still rode northbound trains, maimed in body and spirit by their time in the sinks that passed for rebel prisons. Some from the Confederacy had vanished into Mexico, into the army of the khedive of Egypt, or to the West, trying to forget the invisible wounds they bore. Orry's young cousin Charles had chosen the third path.

Others had ended the war steeped in ignominy. Chief among them was Jeff Davis, run to earth near Irwinville, Georgia. Many Northern papers said he'd tried to elude capture by wearing a dress. Whatever the truth, for certain elements in the North prison wasn't enough for Davis. They wanted a hang rope.

George lit one of his expensive Cuban cigars and crossed to the windows overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue. The suite offered a fine view of the day's parade route, but he had special tickets for a reviewing stand directly across from the President's. With care, he raised a window.

The sky was cloudless. He leaned out to let the cigar smoke blow away and noticed all the patriotic bunting on the three- and four-story buildings fronting the avenue. Brighter decorations were at last replacing the funeral crepe that had hung everywhere after Lincoln's murder.

A scarlet band of light above the Potomac River basin marked the horizon. Vehicles, horsemen, and pedestrians were beginning to move on the muddy avenue below. George watched a black family — parents, five children — hurry in the direction of President's Park. They had more than the end of the war to celebrate. They had the Thirteenth Amendment, forever abolishing slavery; the states had only to ratify it to make it law.