4 pp. Printed and hand-written document signed. “Final [Pay] Statement”, at discharge, 26 year-old 1st Sgt. Douglass, Company C, 24th Regiment, U.S. Infantry, “5 feet 3 ½ inches high, Yellow complexion, Black eyes, Black hair and by occupation a farmer…”.
Born to free “mulatto” parents in Knoxville, Tennessee before the Civil War, Douglass had first joined the Army in 1867 as an 18 year-old Private in a Black regiment of ‘Buffalo Soldiers’, assigned to the New Mexico Territory to garrison frontier posts, protect the trans-continental railroad lines which were under construction from hostile Indians, and the roadways against bandits, and patrol the US-Mexico border. Twelve years after this discharge, Douglass again joined the Army, as a Private in the Buffalo Soldiers’ Tenth Cavalry, but after seeing action against the Apaches - and spending some jail time in a violent New Mexico town where Billy the Kid had once held sway - he left the service to settle in Forth Worth, working at various jobs from bookkeeper to blacksmith. Meanwhile, Douglass’ commanding officer, then-Captain Henry Clark Corbin, who signed these discharge papers, after 14 years of service as an officer of Colored Troops, was rewarded by transfer from the Wild West to become military aide to Presidents Hayes and Garfield. Later appointed Adjutant General of the US Army during the Spanish-American War, Corbin also commanded American forces in the Philippines and retired, before World War I, as a Lt. General.