![]() ![]() ![]() “I am satisfied that the fire of this battery,” he reported, “contributed no little to our success, and am gratified. ![]() For this he won high praise as well as personal satisfaction, calling it a “delightful” experience. Stationed along the South Carolina coast, the regiment saw action at Secessionville on June 16, 1862–with Capers personally handling an artillery battery that was tardy coming into action. He helped recruit the Twenty-fourth South Carolina Infantry and was elected its lieutenant colonel. Then began a steady, if unspectacular rise. Partly on the strength of his military education, he was elected major of a regiment of South Carolina volunteers and participated in the bombardment of Fort Sumter. The outbreak of the Civil War cut short his teaching career. Afterward he read law, though he never practiced, and taught at the academy as a professor of mathematics and rhetoric. He attended the South Carolina Military Academy (the Citadel), graduating in 1857. Much in Ellison Capers’s early life mirrored the lives of his ancestors. William Capers was a well known Methodist minister and bishop and an instrumental voice in the 1844 sectional split of the church. The Capers men were active and prominent as lawyers, soldiers, and religious leaders. Capers was born in Charleston on October 14, 1837, to William Capers and Susan McGill. ![]()
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