Confederate General Robert E. Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) mounted on Traveller, a gray American Saddlebred horse. The horse that was his closest companion during the Civil War became his instrument in finding peace afterwards.

In a let ter dictated to his daughter shortly before his death, the old general described his beloved war horse. “I am no artist; I can only say he is a Confederate grey. I purchased him in the mountains of Virginia in the autumn of 1861. He has been my patient follower ever since — to Georgia, the Carolinas, and back to Virginia. He carried me through the Seven Days battle around Richmond, the Second Manassas, at Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, the last day at Chancellorsville, to Pennsylvania, at Gettysburg, and back to the Rappahannock…You can, I am sure, from what I have said, paint his portrait.” Traveller outlived Lee by only a few months.

"On the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, th enceforward, and forever free", stated The Emancipation Proclamation issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862, during the Civil War. It proclaimed the freedom and changed the legal status under federal law of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans.