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“C” is for Capers, Ellison (1837-1908)

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“C” is for Capers, Ellison (1837-1908). Educator, soldier, minister. A Charleston native, Capers graduated from the South Carolina Military Academy (the Citadel) in 1857. Afterward he read law, but never practiced, and taught at the mathematics and rhetoric at the academy. With the outbreak of the Civil War, he became an officer in the Confederate army seeing action at Secessionville and later with the Army of the Tennessee and was wounded at the battles of Franklin, Jackson, and Chickamauga. In 1865 he was promoted to brigadier general. After the war he was secretary of state (1866-1868). In 1867 he was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church and served congregations in Greenville and Columbia. In 1894, Ellison Capers was consecrated bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina in a ceremony at Trinity Church, Columbia.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.