It was a warm Sunday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in late spring of 1865. An older man, one of the church’s many distinguished communicants, who had spent the last four years in war, was sitting in his customary pew. With his shoulders rounded, his middle thickened, his hair snow-white and beard gray, as usual, he attracted the attention of the rest of the church. But then so did another parishioner.

As the minister, Dr. Charles Minnergerode, was about to administer Holy Communion, a tall, well-dressed black man sitting at the western gallery (which was reserved for Negroes) unexpectedly advanced to the communion table - unexpectedly because this had never happened her before. Suddenly, the image of Richmond redux was conjured up - a flashback to prewar years. Usually whites received communion first, then blacks - a small but strictly adhered to ritual, repeated so often that to alter it was unthinkable. This one small act, then, was like a large frontier separating two worlds: the first being that of the antebellum South, the second being that of post-Civil War America. The congregation froze; those who had been ready to go forward and kneel at the alter rail remained fixed in their pews. Momentarily stunned, Minnergerode himself was clearly embarrassed. The horror and surprise of the congregation were no doubt visceral, but Minnergerode’s silent retreat was evident. It was one thing for the South to endure defeat and poverty, or to accept the fact that slaves were now free; it was quite another for a black man to stride up to the front of the church as though an equal. And not just at any church, but here, at the sanctuary of Richmond’s elite; the wealthy, the well-bred, the high-cultured.

The black man slowly lowered his body, kneeling, while the rest of the congregation tensed in their pews. For his part, the minister stood, clearly uncomfortable and still dumbfounded. After what seemed to be an interminable amount of time - although it was probably only seconds - the white man arose, his gait erect, head up and eyes proud, and walked quietly up the aisle to the chancel trail. His face was a portrait of exhaustion, and he looked far older than most people had remembered from when the war had just begun. These days had been hard on him. Recently, in a rare unguarded moment he had uncharacteristically blurted out, “I’m homeless - I have nothing on earth.”
Yet these Richmonders, like the entire South, still looked to him for a sense of purpose and guidance. No less so now as, with quiet dignity and self-possession, he knelt down to partake of the communion, along the same rail with the black man.

Watching Robert E. Lee, the other communicants slowly followed in his path, going forward to the alter, and, with a mixture of reluctance and fear, hope and awkward expectation, into the future.*

* Note: This excerpt is from the book April 1865 by Jay Winik.