I would like to respond to the last post by encouraging people to "get carried away" on their posts. It's good to see someone with some fire in their belly get up on the stump. That's what makes this site interesting.
I'd also like to weigh in on this missing documentation and muster roll issue. One really big problem is reading handwritten muster rolls. Some people in that day had beautiful handwriting - some of it was too beautiful, with all sorts of scrolls and such that can make determining the identity of an individual letter very difficult. Other handwriting was just plain unclear. Throw a good deal of illiteracy into the mix, with it's resultant creative spellings, and you have a real mess to deal with.
One example, since this is thread deals with Black US soldiers and the Red River Campaign: The OR (Vol 34) records in detail the shooting of Sgt. Antoine Davis below Moreauville during the last days of the RR Campaign, and says he died a few days later in New Orleans. If anyone has ever found any other reference to Antoine Davis, in any muster roll etc, I'd sure like to hear about it. I can't find him on any colored unit muster roll or any burial list. Where did he go? Did he ever exist? Or should I be looking for an Antoine Dawes or some such other "close but not quite" spelling?