The Hazards ate a quick breakfast. Brett looked particularly happy and excited, George thought with a certain envy. In a few weeks, Billy planned to resign his commission. Then the two of them would board a ship for San Francisco. They'd never seen California, but descriptions of the climate, the country, and its opportunities attracted them. Billy wanted to start his own civil engineering firm. Like his friend Charles Main, with whom he'd attended West Point — both inspired by the example of George and Orry — he wanted to go far from the scarred fields where American had fought American.

The couple needed to travel soon. Brett was carrying their first child. Billy had told this to George privately; decency dictated that a pregnancy never be discussed, even by family members. When a woman neared her term and her stomach bulged, people pretended not to notice. If a second child arrived, parents often told their firstborn that the doctor brought the baby in a bottle. George and Constance observed most of the proprieties, even many that were silly, but they had never stooped to the bottle story.

The family reached the special reviewing section by eight-fifteen. They took seats among reporters, congressmen, Supreme Court justices, senior army and navy officers. To their left, the avenue jogged around the Treasury Building at Fifteenth Street; the jog hid the long rise of the street up to the Capitol.

To their right, for blocks into the distance, people jammed behind barricades, hung from windows and roof peaks, sat on sagging tree limbs. Directly opposite stood the covered pavilion for President Johnson's party, which would include Generals Grant and Sheridan and Stanley Hazard's employer, Secretary of War Stanton. Along the pavilion's front roof line, among bunting swags and evergreen sprays, hung banners painted with the names of Union victories: ATLANTA and ANTIETAM, GETTYSBURG and SPOTSYLVANIA, and more.