Short answers, pulled from the story.
Richard Taylor (the 27th of January 1826 - the 12th of April 1879) was a Louisiana sugar planter, politician, and Confederate general during the Civil War. He was the only son of U.S. President Zachary Taylor and the brother-in-law of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. He rose to the rank of lieutenant general without any prior military training or a West Point education.
Taylor commanded the Confederate forces in the Red River Campaign of 1864, defeating U.S. General Nathaniel P. Banks at the Battle of Mansfield and the Battle of Pleasant Hill on April 8-9. He pursued Banks back to the Mississippi River, and the Confederate Congress issued a joint resolution officially thanking Taylor and his soldiers for their service in the campaign. He was promoted to lieutenant general on the 8th of April 1864.
Richard Taylor was the only son of Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States. His sister Sarah Knox Taylor was the first wife of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, though she died of illness in 1835, three months after their marriage. This family connection to Davis influenced Taylor's Confederate commission.
Taylor surrendered his department at Citronelle, Alabama, to U.S. General Edward Canby on the 4th of May 1865, nearly a month after Appomattox. It was the third and last major Confederate force remaining east of the Mississippi River. The rest of his command was paroled on the 12th of May 1865, in Gainesville, Alabama.
Taylor published Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War in 1879, the same year he died. It is considered one of the most credible firsthand accounts of the Civil War. The historian T. Michael Parrish wrote that Taylor had given enhanced dignity to defeat and surrender in that memoir.
Taylor began his college studies at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and completed them at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, graduating in 1845. He was a member of Skull and Bones and received no academic honors, having spent most of his time reading classical and military history books rather than pursuing formal coursework.