Nice large bold ink signature on a card that meas. approx. 3.00 x 1.75 inches. Inscription is in three lines and reads “NELSON A. MILES / LIEUT. GENERAL / U. S. ARMY. On reverse is printed “LIEUTENANT GENERAL MILES.” Also with the card is a photo of Miles as a Major General. Photo looks to be an old copy and not original to the period.

Nelson Appleton Miles was born in Westminster, Massachusetts on August 8, 1839. He worked in Boston and attended night school, read military history, and mastered military principles and techniques, including battle drills.

Miles was working as a crockery store clerk in Boston when the Civil War began. He entered the Union Army on September 9, 1861, as a volunteer and fought in many crucial battles.

During the Civil War he became a Lieutenant in the 22nd Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, and was commissioned Lieutenant Colonel of the 61st New York Volunteer Infantry on May 31, 1862. He was promoted to Colonel after the Battle of Antietam. Other battles he participated in include Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and the Appomattox Campaign. Wounded four times in battle (he was shot in the neck and abdomen at Chancellorsville), he was awarded the rank of brevet Brigadier General in the Regular Army in recognition of his actions at Chancellorsville, and also received a brevet promotion to Major General for Spotsylvania Court House. He received the Medal of Honor (on July 23, 1892) for gallantry at Chancellorsville and was appointed Brigadier General of Volunteers as of May 12, 1864, for the Battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House. On October 21, 1865, he was appointed Major General of Volunteers at age 26. After the war, he was commandant of Fort Monroe, Virginia, where former Confederate President Jefferson Davis was held prisoner. During his tenure at Fort Monroe, Miles was forced to defend himself against charges that Davis was being mistreated.

In July 1866, Miles was appointed a colonel in the Regular Army. In March 1869 he became commander of the 5th U.S. Infantry Regiment. He played a leading role in nearly all of the Army's campaigns against the American Indian tribes of the Great Plains. In 1874-1875, he was a field commander in the force that defeated the Kiowa, Comanche, and the Southern Cheyenne along the Red River. Between 1876 and 1877, he participated in the campaign that scoured the Northern Plains after Custer's defeat at the Battle of Little Big Horn and forced the Lakota and their allies onto reservations. In the winter of 1877, he drove his troops on a forced march across Montana and intercepted the Nez Percé band led by Chief Joseph. While on the Yellowstone he developed expertise with the heliograph for sending communications signals, establishing a 140-mile-long (230 km) line of heliographs connecting Fort Keogh and Fort Custer, Montana in 1878.

In December 1880, he was promoted to Brigadier General in the Regular Army. He was then assigned to command the Department of the Columbia (1881–85) and the Department of Missouri (1885–86)

In 1886, Miles replaced General George Crook as commander of forces fighting against Geronimo in the Department of Arizona and in 1888 he became the commander of the Military Division of the Pacific and the Department of California

In April 1890, Miles was promoted to Major General in the Regular Army and became the commander of the Military Division of the Missouri. That same year, the last major resistance of the Sioux on the Lakota reservations, known as the Ghost Dance, brought Miles back into the field. His efforts to subdue the Sioux led to Sitting Bull's death and the massacre at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890. Miles was not directly involved at Wounded Knee but was critical of the commanding officer. Just two days after the event, Miles wrote to his wife, describing Wounded Knee as "The most abominable criminal military blunder and a horrible massacre of women and children”

In his capacity of commander of the Department of the East from 1894 to 1895 Miles commanded the troops mobilized to put down the Pullman strike riots. He was named Commanding General of the United States Army in 1895, a post he held during the Spanish-American War. Miles commanded forces at Cuban sites such as Siboney.

After the surrender of Santiago de Cuba by the Spanish, he personally led the invasion of Puerto Rico, landing in Guánica in what is known as the Puerto Rican Campaign. He served as the first head of the military government established on the island, acting as both head of the army of occupation and administrator of civil affairs. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General in 1900 based on his performance in the war.

Called a "brave peacock" by President Theodore Roosevelt, Miles retired from the Army in 1903 upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 64. A year later, at the Democratic National Convention, he received a handful of votes. Upon his retirement, the office of Commanding General of the U.S. Army was abolished by an Act of Congress and the Army Chief of Staff system was introduced.

Miles died in 1925 at the age of 85 from a heart attack while attending a circus in Washington, D.C., with his grandchildren. He was one of the last surviving general officers of the Civil War. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in the Miles Mausoleum.

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