Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/200

 IS 2 Southern Historical Society Papers.

GETTYSBURG.

The Courageous Part Taken in the Desperate Conflict June 2-3, 1863,

By the Florida Brigade (General E. A. Perry), there Commanded by Colonel David Lang, with the Serious Casualties Sustained.

[The following account is taken from the worthy tribute to a noble brother "The Memoir of Captain Charles Seton Fleming, of the Second Florida Infantry, C. S. A., by Francis P. Fleming (ex-Gov- ernor of Florida), Jacksonville, 1881," in which it forms Chapter VI, pp. 79-88, and Appendix G, pp. 121-4.

Charles Seton Fleming, the son of Colonel Lewis Fleming, a planter of Florida, of gentle Irish descent, was born near Jackson- ville, February 9, 1839; educated in local private school, and in youth found employment in a mercantile house in Chicago, 111. He evinced at an early age a preference for the profession of arms, and early in the year 1858, entered as a cadet " King's Mountain Military School " at Yorkville, South Carolina, the principal of which institu- tion was Major Micah Jenkins, who afterward served with distinction as a General in the C. S. Army, ' ' and fell a martyr to the ' Lost Cause ' on the bloody field of the ' Wilderness ' on the 5th of May, 1864."

Young Fleming attended this school until June, 1859. After serv- ing for a time as the purser on a river steamer, he entered, in July, 1860, upon the study of law, in the office of his brother, Louis J. Fleming, in Jacksonville, Florida. In consonance with his instincts he was also a member of a local military company the "Minute Men." In April, 1861, in the " momentous call of the period," he assisted in raising a company to form a part of the Second Florida infantry, designed as a representative regiment of his State, for ser- vice in Virginia. It was organized at Pulatka, early in May, with John W. Starke as captain, C. Seton Fleming, first lieutenant, Alex- ander Mosely (son of ex-Governor Mosely), senior second lieutenant and John E. Caine, a native of South Carolina, as junior second lieutenant. The Second Florida infantry entered the field by going into encampment at Yorktown, Va., on the lyth September, 1861.

In the sight of Yorktown, in the spring of 1862, the Second Florida,