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Printed and handwritten document Signed. 4pp. “Final Statement” at discharge of Sgt. Henry Goins of Indiana, a Farrier, aged 28, “black complexion, black eyes, black hair”, who had enlisted in 1867.  

Nicholas Merritt Nolan, his 37 year-old commanding officer, was an Irish immigrant who rose through the ranks from Private, fought gallantly at Gettysburg and in sixteen Civil War campaigns, and, after recovering from serious wounds, spent 14 years leading African-American Buffalo soldiers in the Indian Wars. He played an heroic role in the “Staked Plains Horror” of 1877, which brought his Black troops close to death while pursuing Comanches through the punishing deserts of Texas and New Mexico - and a more ambiguous one in the 1879 dishonorable discharge of his Adjutant, Henry Flipper, the first African-American graduate of West Point. Nolan’s autograph is scarce, as he died unexpectedly in 1883 while in command of Fort Apache in Arizona Territory.