 The elder Yonge became a lawyer and was only twenty years old when he served as assistant secretary of the first Florida constitutional convention held in 1838 at St. Joseph.In 1843, Chandler Yonge was elected to the Florida state senate, and in 1845 he was appointed by President Polk as the United States district attorney for Florida.When Florida seceded and joined the Confederacy he served in the same capacity for the Confederate States; later he was commissioned as a quartermaster in the Confederate Army with the rank of major and stationed at Tallahassee.