On September 4, 1862, a young man from Mobile, Alabama, enlisted as a volunteer in Murrell's Independent Cavalry (which would later become Company C, Murphy's Battalion of the Alabama Cavalry) in the army of the Confederate States of America. Charles meant to fight to defend his country in the war against his former nation. People in the Confederacy called it the War for Southern Independence.

Charles was thirty-two years of age. His father had been a probate judge in Mobile but he had died almost sixteen years previous when Charles was fourteen years old. He and the two other boys (Maniluis and Bushrod) had been both providers and fathers for their mother and sister.