Brigadier-General Ellison Capers, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 5, South Carolina
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

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[753] Pickens Rifles. He served as a private in this organization for several months, and then removing to Marietta, Ga., with his parents, was out of the service until January 1, 1863, when he received an appointment as cadet at the Arsenal academy, Columbia. In June following the Arsenal cadets were ordered to Charleston to do guard duty at the commissary and quartermaster departments, and he was thus engaged until the close of that year, when he resigned his cadetship and enlisted in the Palmetto Guards, or Company A, Manigault's battalion, South Carolina siege train. With the latter command he was on duty during the remainder of the war, participating in all the engagements of his command after the capture of the steamer Isaac P. Smith, and serving in both the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia. At the surrender he was in the hospital at Charlotte, N. C., whence he went to Greensboro to give his parole, and from that place returned partly by rail, but most on foot, till he neared Charleston, when he was taken in charge by a Federal outpost and escorted to the provost marshal's office in the city. Though required to make daily reports he was treated with the greatest kindness, allowed to draw daily rations for three weeks, and with many other Charleston boys was given remunerative work in caring for the ordnance accumulated by the Federal forces. While thus engaged he was severely injured and was cared for in the hospital at the orphan house for three weeks. In 1869 he began his career with the South Carolina railroad, and since 1880 he has been connected with the general freight office as chief clerk, first serving in that capacity under Col. S. B. Pickens.

Captain Richard Wilburn Minus made a fine Confederate record in the West. He was in Missouri when the war began, to which place he had gone to practice law after his admission to the bar, and entered the service promptly in the spring of 1861, in the Missouri state guards, commanded by Maj.-Gen. Sterling Price. He was elected second lieutenant of Capt. (later Colonel) Frazier's company of cavalry, but was afterward assigned to duty in the quartermaster's department of Colonel Schnable's cavalry command, of McBride's division. He, however, closed the six months service with Frazier's regiment, after having participated in most of the engagements of